Dutch Newspaper Interview with Ahmedjan Kasim: “I Am Grateful, but I Have Also Faced Discrimination”

Editor’s Note: This interview was originally published by De Volkskrant, ‘The People’s Paper’, a Dutch daily morning newspaper, and has been republished in English by Uyghur Times and in Uyghur by Uyghur Post with permission from De Volkskrant. You can read the original article here.

First Generation: Ahmedjan Kasim from East Turkestan

“I am grateful, but I have also been belittled”

Uyghur Ahmedjan Kasim (29) seemingly found his way in the Netherlands without effort. He speaks the language fluently and became active for the VVD. “But sometimes I think: what was all that integrating for? I will always be seen as a foreigner.”

By Angela Wals | Photo by Marwan Magroun

July 5, 2009, was a key moment in the life of Ahmedjan Kasim. The then 13-year-old Kasim was at home alone with a friend in his apartment in Ürümqi, the capital of the Chinese province of Xinjiang.

“Uyghurs prefer to call the area East Turkestan, Uyghurstan, or Vetern,” says Kasim from his living room in his ground-floor apartment somewhere in Gelderland. He prefers not to say exactly where he lives, fearing the long arm of Beijing.

“Our mothers had gone downtown for dinner. At one point, we heard bangs. From the window, we saw black smoke. My friend’s aunt called and said: ‘Close all the doors tightly and definitely do not go outside.’ Then we became afraid. We tried to find out what was going on via the internet, but the internet went out.”

Hundreds of Uyghurs had taken to the streets that July 5th to demonstrate against the Chinese government. The protesters demanded an investigation into a fight in a Southern Chinese factory city where two Uyghur workers had been beaten to death by Han Chinese. But it wasn’t just about those workers, Kasim says. The demonstration was a culmination of years of frustration over the way Uyghurs had been treated as second-class citizens for ages.

The peaceful protest turned into riots after harsh police action. The violence also targeted Han Chinese in the city, resulting in dozens of deaths. Retaliatory actions followed, with dozens of Uyghur victims. Afterward, the government arrested hundreds of Uyghurs; more than twenty received the death penalty.

“At half-past ten, our mothers finally came home. They had to walk; no car, bus, or taxi was running from the center to home once the unrest reached the restaurant. It was only years later that my mother told me she had to step over bodies.” Shortly after his mother returned home, the power went out in all of Ürümqi.

“The next morning, the electricity was reconnected, and I saw on TV how the Chinese state media portrayed the demonstrators as terrorists, directed from abroad, against whom harsh action naturally had to be taken. A months-long lockdown was announced.”

How did your life change after July 5th?

“Military convoys and patrols appeared on the streets. It became quiet in the city, which used to be very lively. Meetings were prohibited. I hardly saw any young men on the street anymore. Rumors circulated that they were being picked up.

Political discussions had always passed me by as a child. I attended a Chinese primary school and spoke good Mandarin. I had always seen the discrimination against Uyghurs—I remembered job posters saying ‘not for Uyghurs,’ and I recall a bus passenger being beaten up out of nowhere at a checkpoint. After July 5th, I started wondering for the first time: why is all this happening? What does this say about me as a Uyghur? And I realized: in the eyes of the Chinese, I am ‘the other.'”

“My mother had doubted for years whether her son would have a future in China. She had a job at a tourism bureau under government supervision and organized trips from Ürümqi to former Soviet countries in Central Asia. A month after the demonstration, she made a business trip to Istanbul. There, she received a phone call from a colleague warning her not to return. My mother had been captured on camera footage in the city on July 5th, and that was enough evidence for the government to label her a suspect. On the spot, she had to decide what to do. She chose to fly to the Netherlands and applied for asylum there.”

When did you see your mother again?

“After 831 days. I lived alternately with my grandmothers. My parents were divorced, and my father worked in another province. In the final months, he came back to take care of me. Shortly after my mother’s departure, there was a raid on our home, and secret agents seized my passport. So, I couldn’t follow my mother immediately.

Crazy enough, those were quite beautiful years. I was a teenager and actually found it relaxed that my strict mother wasn’t watching me all the time. My friends became my family. With about ten friends, I played every day. Football, ringing doorbells and running away, making fires, roasting potatoes in the coals, jumping from the balcony of the flat into five meters of deep snow.

After two and a half years, through various detours and my mother’s contacts, I got my passport back. I received a visa through the Dutch embassy. My mother wanted me to come to the Netherlands as quickly as possible, but my father preferred that I stay with him. One day I was at home with my father, uncles, and grandmother when my grandmother suddenly put me on the spot: ‘Come here, Ahmedjan, what do you choose?’ It’s a moment I prefer not to look back on. I told my father: ‘I will come back often to visit you.'”

Where is your father now?

“He was arrested in 2017 and sentenced to fifteen years in a ‘re-education camp.’ I have no idea what for; I also have no contact with him. I hope he comes out alive; his health was already not good.”

“My flight brought him to the attention of the Chinese government, I know that. Foreign contacts are considered punishable. In that same year, Uyghurs were arrested on a large scale as part of Xi’s military operation ‘Hard Crackdown Against Violent Terrorism.'”

Do you still speak to your childhood friends?

“No. Everyone unfriended me one by one on WeChat, a kind of Chinese WhatsApp. For security reasons, it sometimes said.” Kasim gives a soft tap on his trouser pocket.

What’s in your pocket?

“Yes. My phone is in there. I have saved photos of my friends under favorites. Do you want to see them?” He grabs his phone and scrolls: “Let’s see. This is Malik. He was nicknamed ‘Giraffe’ because he was the tallest of everyone. And Bora, he was my best friend. He wasn’t afraid of anyone and picked fights with everyone. A real street kid. But for his friends, he would go through fire.

Zakkiyat had also removed me from WeChat in 2017 without notice. Two years later, I suddenly received a message from him. ‘I haven’t spoken to you for so long,’ he wrote. ‘I miss you.’ And he bombarded me with photos and videos of familiar places in Ürümqi. He had also recorded a video for me in which he plays a Uyghur song on the guitar. It’s called Weda, which means ‘promise’ and is about being young, love, and brotherhood. We always sang it together. ‘Do you still remember this?’ Zakkiyat asked me. I certainly remembered.”

What did you send back?

“Almost nothing. I wanted to tell him so much, but I held back. I didn’t want to put him in further danger.” Kasim puts his phone back. “Anyway, that was also six years ago.”

In November 2011, Kasim flew to Amsterdam via Beijing and Moscow. His mother was waiting for him behind the sliding doors. “In the train to Ede-Wageningen, she could only look at me smiling.” He completed mavo, mbo, and hbo and studied law at Utrecht University. In the meantime, his mother was constantly intimidated by agents of the Chinese Communist Party. In 2020, he decided to actively resist China’s repressive policy. He spoke in the media about the Uyghur struggle and published a book about his experiences in 2022.

You write that after a few years in the Netherlands, you began to taste more of the freedom you never had before.

You could express your opinion at school, speak Uyghur if you wanted. “The only thing you have to do in the Netherlands is work hard. And I can do that.” Kasim sighs. “I must honestly say that a lot has happened since the publication of the book. First-generation immigrants like me feel a lot of gratitude. And that is justified; I am safe here. I was no longer afraid that someone would be waiting for me after school.

But I have also been belittled by teachers, laughed at by students, insulted on the football field, and ethnically profiled. The moments I have been discriminated against are numerous. But for a long time, I didn’t see it that way. I thought everything paled in comparison to the all-encompassing racism I knew from my youth. Anything less severe than that felt like freedom.

In 2022, I participated in the municipal elections in Ede for the VVD, but shortly afterward I resigned my membership: I could no longer agree with the course they took on asylum. After the fall of the fourth Rutte cabinet and the PVV’s victory in 2023, something broke in me. In the heart of our democracy, there was suddenly the political legitimation of all that simmering racism in society. That ‘family reunification on top of family reunification’ (nareis op nareis) statement by Yeşilgöz was also about me. It was as if the party had said to my face: ‘Actually, you shouldn’t have been allowed to come to your mother.’

I learned the language, I studied, I have a job as a civil servant, I built a life. I didn’t grow up with the question ‘hey, how was your weekend?’, but fine, if that’s the norm, I’ll participate. Sometimes I think: what was all that integrating for? I will always be seen as a foreigner.”

How many languages do you speak?

“Five: Uyghur, Mandarin, Dutch, English, and Turkish. I am now learning Russian. I have a knack for languages; I’m lucky with that. I used to always take it as a compliment when people said: ‘How well you speak Dutch!'”

Is that not a compliment then?

“It is often well-intended, but sometimes it also serves as a yardstick against which someone’s integration is measured. It’s a way of saying: you are the exception. It reminds me of ‘the compliments’ I received from Han Chinese about my Mandarin. ‘You are one of the good Uyghurs,’ they would say.

I went into therapy to process traumas. There I learned about the integration paradox: the more highly educated you are, the more homogeneous the group, and the more exclusion you experience. For a long time, I indeed felt lonely. I missed the safe haven of friends where I could be myself. It’s going a bit better now. I’ve learned to be less critical of myself and to have more fun. And the togetherness that I miss in the Netherlands, I have found among Uyghurs across Europe.”

UYGHURS

Uyghurs form an ethnic minority in China and live mainly in Xinjiang, a Chinese territory since 1949. They speak a Turkic language and are mostly Muslim. The Chinese government carries out a policy of sinicization, aimed at making the economy, culture, and society more Chinese, including by stimulating the settlement of Han Chinese. Since 2017, an estimated one million Uyghurs and other Islamic minorities have been locked up in re-education camps, where there is indoctrination, forced labor, and abuse. China justifies this policy as a fight against terrorism, extremism, and separatism. Among others, the Netherlands and the United States speak of genocide. Uyghur extremists have carried out attacks since the turn of the century, which have become increasingly professional. An estimated two thousand Uyghurs live in the Netherlands.

Some names and places have been anonymized for security reasons.

To read the original article in Dutch, please visit here.

Editor’s Note: This interview was originally published by De Volkskrant, ‘The People’s Paper’, a Dutch daily morning newspaper, and has been republished in English by Uyghur Times and in Uyghur by Uyghur Post with permission from De Volkskrant. You can read the original article here.