Despite traveling through 13 countries and thousands of kilometers from his home in China years ago, the last words Ersin Erkinuly's mother spoke to him are etched in his memory. He remembers her face as if he said goodbye to her yesterday.
"Son, make sure you eat before you set off on your long journey tomorrow. We will see you now...and your father and I will come home around lunchtime to see you again. Wait for us."
Erkinuly, 25, couldn't continue living in his parents' home because of the oppression and threat of being sent to a Chinese "reeducation camp." But he couldn't stay in his ancestral homeland, Kazakhstan, either, because of the surveillance by Kazakh special services.
So he set off for Europe.
"It seems unbelievable, but it's true," he began the story of his adventures over the phone to RFE/RL from a Warsaw housing complex for refugees. Erkinuly, also known as Yilisen Aierken, was released from a detention center for asylum-seekers in Poland on August 7 after spending six months there due to repeated border violations since he entered the EU. At the refugee complex, he and others are fed and housed and able to communicate freely with human rights organizations, embassies, journalists, and anyone else who might be able to help them.
Escaping Chinese Pressure
Recalling his reasons for leaving home, Erkinuly says it started with the strict religious surveillance of his neighbors during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month when people fast from dawn to dusk. Tight control of Muslims -- mostly Uyghurs, but also ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz -- in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in western China began in 2017.
"Representatives of the village committee arrived at the neighbors' house at 3 o'clock in the morning. I was surprised that they remarked that the neighbors were eating at that time," Erkinuly recalled of his life in China, as if they were unaware of Ramadan.
"Is it impossible to fast during Ramadan?" Erkinuly thought. "China had begun to impose tight restrictions on believers."
Authorities once asked his parents whether they got married according to Muslim customs, whether their children prayed the "namaz," and questioned what places they had visited. A "yes" answer to any of those queries could result in a family being deemed "extremist" and hauled off to the camps.
In 2018, China's oppression of indigenous people in Xinjiang moved into the open. Anyone deemed suspicious, including those who had traveled abroad, was sent to "reeducation camps," where they were taught intensive Chinese, forced to sing patriotic Chinese songs, and shown "propaganda videos" about the country and Chinese Communist Party policies several times daily. Most of them live in cells.
"I used to live in the Nylki district in Xinjiang. When I was about to go to the city of Qulja, I was checked for a long time. I had forgotten my ID card at home, so they contacted the village committee and let me through only after confirming my place of residence. The also asked for my purpose of traveling. I sent them pictures and videos from the places I visited. Anyway, this kind of control became routine. Even if we returned from a trip to nearby places, we were then followed for a week, and if we went far away, for a month. We had to report everything we saw and learned," Erkinuly said.
Many of his friends were placed in the Chinese "reeducation camps."
Chinese controls intensified, though he says his religious knowledge is quite limited.
Tired of the restrictions, Erkinuly decided to leave China. He was eager to fulfill his long-standing dream of seeing his ancestral homeland, Kazakhstan, so he went to the capital of Xinjiang Province, Urumchi, and got a three-year visa.
"All my actions must have seemed suspicious. 'Why are you going there?' [officials] asked again and again. I lied that I would come back in three months and voluntarily go to a 'reeducation camp.'"
His parents reluctantly let him go. He thought that saying goodbye to them would be very difficult. Besides, he was in a hurry to move to Kazakhstan as soon as possible. So, without saying goodbye, he left for Khorgos, a city on the Chinese-Kazakh border, far north of Almaty.
Ancestral Homeland Disappoints
"When I arrived in Sarkand, a town near Almaty, the people who I had agreed to meet did not pick up the phone," Erkinuly said. "So I stayed in a hostel and the owner informed the National Security Committee (KNB) about me, saying I was from China. The committee came the same day."
On his first day in Kazakhstan, he realized he was "not free of surveillance."
"I spent an hour telling [KNB officials] about the political situation in Xinjiang. I told them it was complicated, and they kept in touch with me every day," he said.
"'Where are you? Where are you going? We need to talk some more,' they said. 'I've told you everything. Why do you keep calling?' I asked. They tried reaching me through others. One day the migration office called and asked me to come over. People from China living in Sarkand stopped inviting me to visit them. Then I went to the southeastern city of Taldykorgan. There I stayed for some time with another friend from China. But different people kept calling me. I was scared," Erkinuly continued.
After the persistent calls, he said it felt as though Kazakhstan supported China's policy of putting Muslims in camps. The denial of refugee status to some brothers and sisters of people he knew "was a confirmation of that," Erkinuly said.
After six months he decided to leave Kazakhstan due to the constant pressure. He decided to go to a country that respects human rights and sympathizes with the Uyghurs and others being persecuted in China.
Ukraine War Benefits
Erkinuly bought a ticket for the Almaty-Istanbul-Paris route with the plan to apply for refugee status in France. But he was detained by Turkish border police in Istanbul.
From that moment, Erkinuly began traveling legally and illegally through European countries to try to get to the Schengen zone, which consists of 24 European countries. From Turkey he flew to Serbia and then to Ukraine.
Erkinuly said the border guards in Ukraine asked him where he got his money for the flight, which he says he got from some generous people he met in a hostel in Serbia who knew he was fleeing China and felt sorry for him.
"English-speaking people are very kind," he said, adding that some friends who followed him on social media also helped.
Erkinuly was in Ukraine when Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, and he says he witnessed several explosions. He wanted to get out of Ukraine because of the war, so he bought a ticket back to Turkey, spending the night in the airport.
He says when he awoke the next morning, his passport and plane ticket were missing. Turkish authorities then put Erkinuly on a flight back to Ukraine.
His hope of getting to a Schengen country legally seemed dashed. He decided to try and cross borders illegally, with the hope of getting go to Poland and later Germany.
"There are only a few [guards] on Ukraine's border with Poland and Slovakia," he said. "I was going to escape over the border at night, along a road near a village. I heard wolves and foxes roaming around. It seems they are not afraid of people or cars. I was so scared to be alone in the complete dark. Later, I paid a taxi driver $50 and he drove me a kilometer from the border. But the border guards caught me [when I got closer to the border]."
A Ukrainian court ordered Erkinuly to be deported to China. But he was required to buy a ticket and didn't have enough money, so they placed him in a detention center.
"In the detention center they allowed us to talk on the phone for two hours every day. From there I called representatives of the Ata-Zhurt organization in Kazakhstan [founded by ethnic Kazakhs originally from Xinjiang who moved to Kazakhstan as part of a government program to "repatriate" ethnic Kazakhs from around the world after Kazakhstan gained independence in late 1991]," he said.
"And I told them I was going to be deported to China and that within a year, 'they will take my corpse out of there.' Then I informed organizations in America and Western countries of my situation. Ukraine couldn't deport me then because other countries reached out to me."
Erkinuly believes that by avoiding the deportation to China, he "avoided death."
But his adventure was far from over.
Escaping The War
Last winter, Erkinuly crossed Poland's border with millions of other Ukrainians fleeing in the aftermath of Russia's invasion. He then managed to get to Germany, the country he had long hoped to reach and where, he thought, he could live freely and without pressure.
"There is a law in EU countries that state that the country where you first registered as a refugee has to decide whether to grant you refugee status or not," he said. "The first time I entered Poland I was fingerprinted [and registered]. And my hope [of staying there] was lost when I saw people from Uzbekistan, Chechnya, and Africa waiting seven or eight years for asylum, with some of them being sent back [to their native countries]."
So when Erkinuly requested refugee status in Germany, they wanted to return him to Poland. He left for other countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France and managed to work in a café and also got jobs cutting vegetables and washing dishes despite not having legal status. He said he usually made about $30-$50 per day.
He said the abundance of refugees in these countries means the police either can't or don't want to check for illegal workers. "That is why I moved easily from one country to another and returned to Germany."
Easily until the day he was on an international bus in Germany and detained by police for "illegal border crossing."
Germany sent Erkinuly to Poland, where his refugee status would be decided. He fled Poland and ended up in Malmo, Sweden, where he was detained and returned to Poland.
'Agreed To Voluntary Return To China'
Erkinuly could still be deported if he loses his appeal. In that case, the original Polish court decision to deport him to China would come into effect. That verdict notes that he is "highly likely to flee abroad again," since he previously sought asylum in Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
The decision also states that Erkinuly "agreed to his voluntary return to China," which he says is untrue.
Polish authorities are purportedly mistrustful of Erkinuly's political views and his version of fleeing China because as he did not express his opinions on social media.
"I was allowed to appeal against the decision of the Migration Department to deny me refugee status within 14 days. I have filed an appeal and it's my last hope. If I am not accepted again I will be sent back to China based on the court decision," Erkinuly said.
He said that "death awaits him" in China, and that he doesn't think his human rights are being protected in Poland and that officials seemed to come up with "various reasons" for refusing his asylum request. Erkinuly is now pinning his hopes on an international human rights organization's support for his cause.
He hasn't spoken to his parents since 2021 and doesn't know if they are in a "political education camp" or not.
Chinese authorities know Erkinuly is seeking asylum, so he has cut off any contact with his relatives. "If they find out that relatives are receiving messages from me it will become a problem for them," he said.
According to the United Nations, since 2017, more than 1 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslims have been sent to closed institutions in Xinjiang Province by Chinese officials due to their religion and the concern they could harbor separatist or extremist beliefs.
Many observers claim Beijing is pursuing a policy to reduce the number of Muslims, as many women have reported being forcibly sterilized or made to have an abortion while in the camps. Other inmates of the "reeducation camps" said they were raped by guards and subjected to medical experiments.
Many men who have been in the camps reported brutal torture, and unexplained deaths occur often, former inmates have said. Several international rights organizations and Western countries have accused Beijing of "genocide" against Muslims in Xinjiang.
Chinese officials refer to the "reeducation camps" as "vocational training centers" and part of a policy in Xinjiang to "fight extremism." They deny the accusation of mistreatment or abuse.
