Uyghurs outside China are traumatized. Now they’re starting to talk about it

June 16, 2021 | By Andrew McCormick

Mustafa Aksu had a bad track record with therapists. Growing up in China, he was bullied by his Han Chinese classmates for being Uyghur. This made him constantly anxious, and his stomach often hurt, so much that sometimes he threw up. A concerned teacher referred him to counseling, but Aksu was skeptical it could help. “I was always waiting for the time when I could go out and live somewhere that I would feel comfortable,” Aksu says. 

In 2017, when news began to emerge of a government crackdown in China targeting Uyghurs and other minority ethnic groups, Aksu was a graduate student in Central Asian Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. In China’s northwestern Xinjiang province, where most Uyghurs live, people were going missing. Police targeted Uyghurs for an ever-expanding list of infractions: growing a beard, throwing a wedding party, having contact with people abroad, including members of their own family.

Read the full article: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/16/1026357/uyghurs-china-minorities-trauma-telehealth-social-media/