A recent prisoner swap between the U.S. and China caught the world’s attention. On this special episode of Zoom In Zoom Out, Wenchi Yu based in Washington, D.C. brings us dispatches from Uyghur-American activist Nury Turkel, whose mother was among the three Uyghurs on the flight bound for the U.S..
In Part 1 of the two-part interview, Turkel discussed his family’s decades-long oppression by China’s government going back to the Cultural Revolution. He also shared behind-the-scenes details of efforts by the U.S. government to rescue his mother.
In Part 1 of the two-part interview, Turkel discussed his family’s decades-long oppression by China’s government going back to the Cultural Revolution. He also shared behind-the-scenes details of efforts by the U.S. government to rescue his mother.
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00:00U.S.-China tensions dominate global news headlines. However, a recent prisoner swap
00:17brought good news that uplifted many who had been working behind the scenes to secure the
00:22freedom of some people. An agreement on prison swap was reached between President Biden and
00:28President Xi Jinping during the latest APEC summit in Peru. Among those who were allowed
00:34to come to the United States is Aisha Mahmoud, a 73-year-old Uyghur from Xinjiang who's the
00:41mother of Nuri Turkel, a high-profile Uyghur American activist, a former chair of the U.S.
00:48Congressional Commission on International Religious Freedom, and a fellow at the Hudson
00:52Institute. This is a two-part interview with Nuri Turkel, and for the first part today,
00:58Nuri shares his family's journey. Well, Nuri, please share with our audience the news,
01:04the incredible news about your family reunion. Thank you very much, Mengqi, for having me on
01:10on your program. As many of the people who follow my work, read my book, listened to my congressional
01:16testimonies, and read my op-eds in the last, I don't know how many years, advocating for my
01:24parents, I never thought in my life that I would see my mom in such a ceremonial way,
01:30in such a dignified way. I was notified three days prior to my mom's arrival. It was a late night,
01:38I missed a call on callback, and it was a cell phone conversation. I still could not believe
01:46what I heard. It was about there's some positive development that I would need to be prepared to
01:53fly down to a U.S. government facility. And, you know, as they should, the message was cautiously
01:59optimistic. I was very pleased. Frankly speaking, I could not sleep. I ran upstairs to the third
02:05floor to wake up my wife, and we hugged and weeped, and then I told my son, you're going to
02:10meet your grandma for the first time soon. And he got so emotional, there's a picture right on my
02:16shoulder over there from my law school graduation, that Ed Wong's New York Times piece has a picture
02:22of it. When my son was four years old, he stood there and asked me who they were. I told him,
02:27grandparents, and the following questions, how come I don't meet them? What can you say? He was
02:33four years old. How do you explain that painful abnormality that myself and my family enduring
02:40was something I could not explain to a four years old. This whole family suffering started
02:46actually when I was born. My mother delivered me in a reeducation camp during the height of
02:53the Cultural Revolution. What year was that? It was 1970, the height of the Cultural Revolution.
03:01So my mother was taken into the reeducation camp, and my father was sent to labor camp,
03:06performing agricultural labor, which is much like what is happening today that caught the
03:12attention of the United States government. After finishing my secondary in high school education,
03:18I came to the United States. It was 29 years ago. So from the time that I left the mainland,
03:25I was only able to spend 11 months with my late father and my mother, who brought me to this world
03:34under such extraordinary circumstances. So because of that upbringing, because of that experience
03:42that my mom and I endured early on, we have a very special bond. I don't know because of that
03:49bond was identified by the leadership in Beijing. They have targeted my mom, taking her passport
03:57away along with my dad. And then starting 2009, at the outset of the Obama administration,
04:03I start contacting people. I started campaigning for my parents. So fast forward, in the following
04:11years, my parents were never told why they cannot travel outside of the country.
04:18They were subject to domestic travel restriction, and things got really, really bad.
04:23So even domestic, there was restriction on their travel?
04:28Yes, yes. That made it even more difficult. They often ask me if I could help them to find out if
04:35there's anything that they have done intentionally, unintentionally, preventing them to even move on
04:42within the region, within the China proper. This whole struggle taken to new level when I
04:49was appointed by then Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, to serve in a government role.
04:56Shortly after my appointment, there was a message that I shouldn't be serving in the US government,
05:02I should be resigning immediately. And then late in 2021, I get sanctioned by Beijing
05:11for my work in the US government.
05:14And that was on international religious freedom?
05:17Yeah, US Commission on International Religious Freedom. It was part of their response to the
05:22Global Globemag sanction that President Biden imposed on four senior Chinese officials who
05:29are responsible for the atrocities committed against the Uyghur people. That also coincided
05:35with the timing of the Biden administration's formal announcement of diplomatic boycott of
05:42the upcoming Winter Olympics. On top of that, around that time, President Biden
05:47signed a very significant legislation called the Uyghur Force Labor Prevention Act that I
05:56worked so hard along with...
05:58Very hard to get it passed.
06:00Yeah, I was expecting that somehow there will be a retaliation. And I thought that it will be
06:07mainly keeping my parents away from me with a wishful thinking that I will just be quiet. I
06:13think there was a miscalculation that sanctioning and continued to mistreat and abuse my parents
06:19actually emboldened me. And then something else also happened in early 2022, that I lost my
06:26father. I was in the official trip to a Central Asian country, Uzbekistan. My wife called and I
06:34was told that dad passed away. I was in the same time zone, literally in the same distance from
06:39Washington to New York. And yet I could not travel because I've been sanctioned. It was
06:44hurtful. I spent the whole night weeping, crying, writing eulogy. I thought that the Chinese will
06:52show some humanity and mercy to let my widowed mother to go. And that didn't happen. And then
06:59late last year, on the eve of the Woodside Summit...
07:05That was during APEC when Xi Jinping visited the United States.
07:09Precisely. That was the breaking point. So before that meeting a few months prior, I had a chance
07:17to meet with President Biden. I made a case directly to him and then I had a chance to speak
07:23with National Security Jake Sullivan. I was pleasantly surprised. Actually, I was very grateful
07:30that President Biden agreed to raise it directly with Xi Jinping. That was the first time. And then
07:34this year, the Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, the Ambassador, continued their own
07:41efforts. And I was regularly kept in the loop. And every time when I asked, Cabinet Secretaries
07:47visiting Beijing, that includes Commerce Secretary Raimondo, raised my mother's case
07:53directly with her counterpart. Others in the senior level also raised the case or at least
08:00pass on the message to the Chinese. So there is a whole of government approach to make it clear to
08:06the Chinese that this is a top priority for the Biden administration, which I'm eternally grateful.
08:13So fast forward and after the election, there's another APEC coming up. I really did not expect
08:20that President Biden would raise it again with Xi Jinping. And this was, you know, it was
08:26specifically on the side of APEC in Peru. President Biden's last meeting with Xi Jinping. I still
08:33don't have the details and it's not really important, you know, what happened, what being
08:37said, but what is important is that shortly after the summit, I started seeing some movement. The way
08:43that the Chinese security officials interacting with my mom, somewhat different. How were they
08:50different? Friendlier and nicer. Did you have a sense that something might happen? I heard my mom
08:58was also notified. So she asked me, look, the authorities told her to be ready for AM flight
09:05to Beijing in the morning. It was less than 24 hours. And I essentially said, just follow the
09:12instruction. Do as they say. Was she informed that she was coming for a visit or she had to leave the
09:21country? She was told that she will be taken to Beijing next morning. There wasn't anything about
09:27meeting you in the U.S. Everybody was kind of both sides, our side and theirs, until the wheels
09:33was up. No one. Very cautious. As you read in the news, no one, myself, my mom, no one in my family,
09:41even remotely aware of the complication of that exchange. So this is like a cinematic scene for
09:47me. I was on my way to Dulles airport. I got a phone call from a DC number. And on the other
09:54side, a diplomat said, somebody wants to talk to you. And then it was mom. And this was the time
10:00that the airplane was taxing about to take off. So it was a relief. When my mom was on the phone,
10:06we cannot even talk. There's no proper word because you need to wait for 20 years. I don't
10:11know where my patients even come from. I don't know how she was able to keep it all together.
10:18She was always upbeat, you know, hopeful. The diplomats who traveled with me, Ambassador Burns,
10:24who greeted my mom on the tarmac, all were impressed by her, how dignified that she
10:33hold herself. No screaming, no crying. I mean, of course he cried after the plane took off.
10:39And she also got very emotional when she saw Ambassador Burns. Also another heartfelt aspect
10:44of this whole transfer. My mom is not a U.S. citizen. And there are other U.S. citizens. And yet
10:52our president called to say, welcome home. And Secretary Blinken calling me by my name,
11:00calling my mother by her first name, as if that we all known each other. The way that she was received
11:06on the tarmac, it was just remarkable. A senior diplomat from the hostage affairs office
11:12walked her down the stairs. And the bottom of the stairs, there was a commander in uniform
11:17greeting her. The whole experience is something that I used to see in the movies.
11:23And I'm so impressed that it was such a well-orchestrated, well-planned, well-executed
11:29operation. And my mom happened to be a part of that operation. We've been praying for this day.
11:35I am just one of the luckiest ones, perhaps the luckiest one. There are countless others
11:42who don't even know where their loved ones are. You know, something that people cannot crush
11:48in me is the hope. I always believe that the hope is the best thing that I have. It's my biggest
11:55and most potent weapon. There's nothing that stops me from being hopeful. The minute that I stop
12:01being hopeful, that would be the end of my endeavors. If anyone who has a family,
12:06either subject to exit ban or locked up, need to be reminded that perseverance,
12:12keeping the pressure on our policy makers, decision makers, really at the end makes a
12:18difference. When you look at the type of people that Chinese government managed to took back,
12:24and the type of people that our government managed to bring home,
12:28it's really in a different way. The Chinese got a fugitive, apparently based on the reporting,
12:35senior MSS official, and then his cohort. And then the other person was committing very serious,
12:41kind of a creepy crime. So they got four. We got three wrongfully imprisoned Americans,
12:47plus three Uyghurs. That's what makes this case so unique. And also good example to countries that
12:55have a sizable Uyghur population with a history of enforced separation, or enforced disappearances,
13:02to look into the mirror to say, look, when President Biden was about to leave the White
13:08House, he can pull this off, maybe can borrow some pages from this playbook. This makes me
13:13so proud of our country. We're in a transition period. President Biden is in the process of
13:18wrapping up. This is very sensitive negotiation. Yes, of course. Adding non-US citizens and the
13:26American citizen swap handled by the State Department, to me, it's quite remarkable. And
13:32it's a good case study for other liberal democracies to start taking care of their own citizens.
13:40This has been a special episode of Zoom In Zoom Out. Be sure to tune in for the second part of
13:45this conversation, where we discuss the world's response. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time.
14:15Transcribed by https://otter.ai
14:45Transcribed by https://otter.ai