This is the story of a people being erased, one family at a time. For almost a decade, the Chinese government has been detaining hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uyghurs in what critics call a systematic attempt to dismantle their culture. And since the beginning, NPR correspondent Emily Feng has reported on these detentions, which were described by the United Nations as possibly constituting crimes against humanity. In this three-part series, Emily follows one man desperately trying to reunite with his wife and children. Along the way, she uncovers surprising new details about some of the Uyghurs enabling this massive surveillance state. To listen to this series sponsor-free and support NPR, sign up for Embedded+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Abdul Latif Kuchar was on the phone with his wife, Maryam.
He had been living in Turkey, and she was back home in China with her two young children.
And so these evening calls had become precious time to reconnect as a family.
On this night, though, there was a knock at Maryam's door, so she put.
The cell phone away.
I heard some noises, the sound of something breaking.
And then the line went silent.
Abdul Latif knew, even from thousands of miles away, what had happened.
They don't arrest people during the day.
They only arrest them at night.
Meryem had been arrested by Chinese authorities, and their children would be taken away.
But where to?
Abdul Latif Coutchar would spend years desperately searching for his family.
And he is not the only one.
People began disappearing.
For almost a decade, the Chinese government has been detaining and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uyghurs, a Turkic minority in western China.
These detainees can be seen, their heads shaved, shepherded into trains.
Many of them have been marched through what Uighurs started figuratively calling the Black Gate.
And they were never heard from again.
It's probably the largest internment of an ethnic or religious minority since the Holocaust.