Erased: Silencing a kindergarten

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Click Here – "Erased: Silencing a Kindergarten"

Podcast: Click Here (Recorded Future News)
Episode Air Date: December 23, 2025
Host: Dina Temple-Raston
Guest: Abdoulaye Ayoob
Episode Focus: The story of a Uyghur linguist’s quest to preserve his people’s language through a kindergarten in Xinjiang, and the Chinese government’s campaign to erase Uyghur identity.

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Overview of Main Theme

This episode is the first in a special series titled “Erased,” investigating China’s efforts to erase Uyghur culture, language, and identity. Through the personal journey of Abdoulaye Ayoob—a linguist who dared to open a Uyghur-language kindergarten—listeners are taken into the quiet yet systematic dismantling of a culture, highlighting how government policies, surveillance, and intimidation combine to silence minorities. The episode warns that such authoritarian erasure doesn’t always begin with violence or military force, but with subtler acts like banning books, rewriting lessons, and policing language.

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Key Points & Insights

1. Abdoulaye Ayoob’s Dream and Early Struggles

• Abdoulaye’s Vision: In 2010, Abdoulaye dreamed of creating a Uyghur-language kindergarten where children could “laugh and learn and speak their own language.”
• Early Success: The school started small but quickly became popular, with long waiting lists. [02:40]
• Quote: “We call it Wisdom of Happiness because we want kids to be happy.” – Abdoulaye Ayoob [02:50]

2. Cultural Suppression in Xinjiang

• Subtle Beginnings: Discrimination was not obvious to Abdoulaye as a child, but signs appeared over time—no Uyghur faces in schoolbooks, parents warning children not to ask “difficult questions.” [06:14]
• Militarization: The arrival of Chinese soldiers to guard mining sites marked a shift; intimidation and arbitrary violence became facts of daily life.
• Book Bans: The removal of Uyghur-language books from the library was a quiet first step in erasing culture. [08:29]
• Quote: “That’s how it starts. Not with explosions, not even with words, but with missing books. A quiet dismantling.” – Dina Temple-Raston [08:41]

3. The Power and Threat of Language

• Language as Identity: Abdoulaye grasped, both intellectually and emotionally, how quickly language can disappear—watching his own daughter lose Uyghur in 6 months after moving to the US.
• Quote: “As a linguist, I knew… But when it came to me, when my daughter lost her language… I said no.” – Abdoulaye Ayoob [10:26]
• Language = Resistance: The Chinese government understands that a shared language binds people into a community, which is why they target it for erasure.
• Quote: “They want us to live as individuals, as 12 million Abduli and 12 million guys. Not as a nation.” – Abdoulaye Ayoob [11:43]

4. Founding the Kindergarten – A Quiet Rebellion

• Filling the Gap: Abdoulaye returned home, realizing that kindergartens were critical—language loss started there due to “Chinese-bilingual” preschools that were, in reality, Mandarin-only.
• Legal Grey Area: There were no explicit rules about language in kindergartens, allowing Abdoulaye to initially operate without interference. [16:27]
• Innovation: He adapted “Dora the Explorer” for Uyghur children, seamlessly integrating their native language in playful ways. [17:56]
• State Surveillance Arrives: Rapid visits from security officials underscored the danger of his project. [18:34]
• Quote: “I felt happy that they couldn’t really understand my writing.” – Abdoulaye Ayoob [18:43]

5. Teaching Freedom as Well as Language

• Beyond Language: Abdoulaye’s school fostered independence and critical thinking, a stark contrast to the regimented obedience expected in Chinese education.
• Quote: “We didn’t only teach kids language, we teach kids how to be an independent human being. We gave them choice.” – Abdoulaye Ayoob [21:12]

6. The Mother Language Movement and Its Suppression

• Movement Grows: The school’s popularity exploded—going viral among mothers and in the broader Uyghur community, becoming the nucleus of the “Mother Language Movement.” [21:59]
• Bureaucratic Clampdown: An attempt to open a second school publicly resulted in government backlash—police harassment, staff resignations, and the ultimate closure of the schools. [22:35–24:09]
• Lingering Trauma: Items left in abandoned classrooms became silent testaments to what was lost, as parents were too afraid to reclaim their children’s belongings. [24:25]

7. Abdoulaye’s Arrest and Aftermath

• Subterfuge for Safety: To prevent panic and possible violence, Abdoulaye pretended the school was being relocated, not closed.
• Detention: Despite his caution, he was detained by authorities, hooded, and subjected to brutal interrogation and torture. [26:49–28:38]
• Quote: “I thought, maybe they will kill me.” – Abdoulaye Ayoob [26:49]
• Upon Release: Surveillance had intensified—checkpoints everywhere, Uyghurs marked and monitored, unable to rent homes or find work. [29:13]
• Exile: Abdoulaye fled to Turkey, later Norway, continuing his advocacy and storytelling from abroad despite the risks to his family remaining in China. [30:57]

8. Cost of Speaking Out

• Collective Punishment: His sister and others close to him were arrested as reprisal for his activism—a tactic widely used against Uyghur dissidents.
• Quote: “How can I say that… because of my sister I should stop?… They told me that this is our last defense… When their life is in danger, how can I keep silence?” – Abdoulaye Ayoob [32:06]

9. The Broader Warning

• Global Relevance: Dina draws parallels to other places where demands for “sameness” threaten minority communities, stressing that cultural erasure happens gradually and deliberately.
• Quote: “Cultures don’t disappear overnight. They’re dismantled deliberately, piece by piece.” – Dina Temple-Raston [03:12]
• Chinese Government Response: The Embassy claims all ethnic groups in Xinjiang “fully enjoy” their rights, but the episode’s reporting counters those official statements. [34:45]
• Conclusion: “Stability is not freedom, and silence is not peace.” – Dina Temple-Raston [34:59]

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “I started in 2010. First I wrote about it. First I wrote my dream and what it looks like and how we do this...” – Abdoulaye Ayoob [01:29]
• “No, the happiness put me in real trouble.” – Abdoulaye Ayoob [03:06]
• “Before, my father just collect books randomly. Then he started collecting books deliberately.” – Abdoulaye Ayoob [08:59]
• “She said it’s because of the former kindergarten… If the kids don’t listen to them, they just beat them.” – Abdoulaye Ayoob [20:05]
• “It became a social phenomenon. People all started to talk about it.” – Abdoulaye Ayoob (on the permit denial going viral) [22:35]
• “Our school paralyzed because we can’t get that money back.” – Abdoulaye Ayoob [23:53]
• “He kept up the act to keep the peace and to buy time to figure out his next move.” – Dina Temple-Raston [25:50]
• “I thought that… maybe they will kill me.” – Abdoulaye Ayoob [26:49]
• “I found, like, the Uyghur homeland changed, like, completely… every 500 meters there’s a checkpoint.” – Abdoulaye Ayoob [29:13]
• “Stability is not freedom, and silence is not peace.” – Dina Temple-Raston [34:59]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [01:29] Abdoulaye describes his dream and the origins of the kindergarten
• [06:14] Describes early signs of cultural exclusion in education
• [08:29] Discussion of book bans and subtle censorship
• [10:06–11:43] The personal loss of language and family identity
• [16:27] Explains the legal ambiguity he used to operate Uyghur kindergartens
• [17:56] Innovative language teaching by adapting “Dora the Explorer”
• [18:34] First visit by state security officers
• [21:59] Growth of the kindergarten and the “Mother Language Movement”
• [22:35] The viral permit denial and ensuing governmental backlash
• [24:25] Emotional aftermath—abandoned belongings and fear
• [26:49–28:38] Arrest, interrogation, and torture
• [29:13] Post-prison surveillance state and exile
• [30:57–32:06] Continuous activism, the price on family and community
• [34:59] The host’s concluding reflection on freedom and silence

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Tone and Language

The episode maintains a narrative, heartfelt tone, blending investigative rigor with deeply personal testimony. Dina Temple-Raston weaves Abdoulaye’s story with contextual commentary and lightly guides listeners through complex, emotional ground without jargon or sensationalism.

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Final Reflection

Through Abdoulaye Ayoob’s journey, “Erased: Silencing a Kindergarten” exposes the subtle machinery of cultural erasure, as well as the courage it takes to resist. The episode warns how easily loss can go unremarked until it is too late—and how vital language, memory, and even the smallest acts of teaching can be in maintaining cultural identity.

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For listeners new to this subject, this episode is a deeply human story about the front lines of authoritarian control and cultural survival—told with clarity, urgency, and compassion.

Transcript

[Dina Temple-Raston]

From recorded future news and prx, this is click here. Hey, it's Dena. The Click Here team is taking a short breather, just long enough to get ahead on reporting for 2026. And when we come back in the new year, we've got a surprise waiting for you. It involves transmitters and antennas, and let's just say we're going back to our roots. More on that soon. For now, we want to revisit a story we spent more than a year reporting. It starts in a small classroom in northwestern China where children once learned to sing and count in the language of their ancestors, Uyghur, which, it turns out the Chinese government frowned upon. Their teacher became suspect. The founder of the school became an enemy of the state. This is the first part of a series called Erased A Click Here investigation into how China is trying to wipe out Uyghur culture. One law, one app, one person at a time. Here's the story. Abdul Wali Ayoob had a simple dream. He wanted to open a kindergarten. A small, joyful place where kids could laugh and learn and speak their own language.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

I started in 2010. First I wrote about it. First I wrote my dream and what it looks like and how we do this and all of my idea.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

In most parts of the world, that would have been a sweet origin story. But in northwestern China, it was more complicated than that. Something Abdoulaye didn't fully appreciate at the time. Perhaps because he was so busy doing what dreamers do. He scribbled down his vision, found a few backers, gathered a handful of wide eyed toddlers and opened the schoolhouse do. And at first, the hiccups were the kind you'd expect at a preschool.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

And the first day, the one kid, she wet her pants. I clean it because like memories. Yeah, because the parents didn't clean me diaper.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

After that, he kept a supply of diapers on hand. And before long, word spread about Abdueli's little school. Parents lined up, literally hoping for a spot.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Yeah, like we have three years of waiting list. Just imagine.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

So he opened a second school, and this one had a name. The Wisdom of Happiness.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

We call it Wisdom of Happiness because we want kids to be happy.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

But in China, happiness in the Uyghur language can be interpreted as defiance. And defiance can. Can be dangerous. The wisdom of happiness got you in trouble.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

No, the happiness put me in real trouble.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Because the language those children were speaking was Uyghur. And in Xinjiang, preserving your culture, your language, isn't seen as an act of pride. It's seen as an act of protest. I'm Dena Temple Raston and this is Click Here, a podcast about all things cyber and intelligence. We tell true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. And today, the first in a four part series on how authoritarianism begins not with tanks in the streets, but with quieter moves like a book taken from the shelf or a rewritten school lesson. Our story starts in northwestern China, but it doesn't end there. Because when governments from Moscow to Mississippi start demanding sameness, when difference becomes defiance, what's happening in China stops being foreign policy and starts feeling like a warning. Because cultures don't disappear overnight. They're dismantled deliberately, piece by piece. Stay with us.

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[Dina Temple-Raston]

You'Re listening to. Click here. I'm Dina Templerest. If you were to tell a young Abdoulaye Ayoop that his people were oppressed by the Chinese, he would have been surprised to hear it.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

I didn't feel any discrimination when I was really young because there is no Chinese to discriminate us.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Han Chinese make up about 90% of China's population. But in the far northwestern reaches of the country where Abduwali was born, most people are weaker. A mix of Turkish and Asian ancestry, a Muslim minority with their own culture and language. In fact, for Abdiweli, Chinese was literally a foreign language.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

I don't know Chinese speak Chinese. I assumed all of the people are speaking Uyghur.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Was Chinese sort of like a foreign language? The same way we might take French or Spanish?

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Yes, it's a foreign language. Yeah, one of the foreign languages. Got it.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

But as he got older, he did start to notice some small things, like no one in his school books looked like him.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

And I asked my father why. And he said that don't ask these difficult questions. You will understand when you grow up. So when I was young, I really wanted to grow up because I really wanted to know.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

When Abduwali Ayyub was a teenager, the landscape around him in northwestern China was beginning to shift. A mining Company had discovered valuable minerals in a nearby mountain. And almost overnight, Chinese soldiers arrived to guard what had suddenly become an important site. One afternoon, Abdueli was riding his bike, just a kid, out with his friends. Chinese soldiers were a fixture in Xinjiang by then, and everyone knew the routine. You pass them, you stop, you nod, you show respect. But that day, his friend looked at him and said, I dare you, ride right past them. No stopping, just pedal.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

For us. If anyone can, like, pass that line without saying hello, we feel ourselves. We are hero.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

It was a game.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Yeah, it was a game. We are kid. How do we know.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

The soldiers weren't playing? They surrounded Abdueli and beat him with sticks in the butts of their guns. His father had to pull them off. That night, Abdueli couldn't even sit down. But it wasn't just the violence. There were smaller humiliations. Like they'd invite soldiers to eat fruit from their orchards, but instead of picking it, the soldiers would shoot it off the trees, leaving their orchards littered with bullets. Or they'd shoot people's pets. It seemed just for fun, just to remind everyone who was in charge. Even the local library wasn't immune. One day, Abdoulaye walked up to the desk and asked for books. And Uyghur. And the librarian looked at him and said they were gone.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

She said that I couldn't give you those books because those books are banned at that time. She cried, because, look, very few books and the books are banned.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

That's how it starts. Not with explosions, not even with words, but with missing books. A quiet dismantling. Alhamduli's father had always been loyal to the Communist Party. But after that beating, Abdoulaye started noticing these subtle shifts in his dad.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Before, my father just collect books randomly. Then he started collect. Collecting books deliberately. And before he doesn't read a lot about history. Then he started to read about history and then talk about it.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

His dad kept those books in a secret box. His own quiet rebellion against forgetting. And that small act of defiance planted a seed in his son. When it came time for college, Abdiweli chose linguistics. He'd started to understand the power of language, and he wanted to protect it and preserve it. Eventually, that took him to graduate school in Kansas, of all places. It was a long way from Xinjiang. But the questions that haunted him about identity and belong, they came with him. And then something happened. Something small and personal, but it hit like a lightning bolt. It happened after he enrolled his daughter in a local Kansas preschool.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

When she came, she speaks Uyghur fluently. She was perfect in her Uyghur. But she lost her language in the US in six months.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Six months. And while this was something he'd been studying, it felt different when he saw it happen to his own family.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

As a linguist, I knew. I knew how language will disappear. Like three generation, yeah, blah, blah, blah. Like this theory. I know how language will die. That's my major. But when it came to me when my daughter lost her language in six months and I said no.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And that was the moment he realized that language isn't just how we speak. It's how we remember who we are. It's how identity takes root. And once he saw that clearly, he started to see something else. That language doesn't just bind families. It binds culture and movements. It builds solidarity. It makes organizing possible. As Abdoulaye put it, language is what turns lots of grains of sand into stone.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Like, the language is just like small pieces of the sand. And language just collect us as a stone, bind us together. And if we don't have that language, everyone can stop us, can destroy us, can do anything.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And do you think that the Chinese government understands this and that's why they're trying to sort of stamp it out?

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Yes. They understand us like they want us to live as individuals, as 12 million Abduli and 12 million guys. Not as a nation, as a people.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And it was there in Kansas, in the land of yellow school buses and PTA meetings, that Abdoulaye had this idea. He knew that language didn't begin in textbooks. It started way before that, on playgrounds, in lullabies, in the first words spoken at home.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Yeah. And then I remember that, like, do we have a Uyghur kindergarten? No, there is no Uyghur kindergarten. All of the kindergartens are Chinese kindergarten, like, quote, unquote, bilingual kindergarten, but in reality, it's Chinese kindergarten. Because of kindergarten, we are losing this language.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And that's when it hit him. If the loss begins that early, maybe the solution does too. Maybe a preschool could keep the Uyghur language alive. He couldn't wait for someone else to act. He would go home and build something no one else had. A school where Uyghur would be the first language children heard, not the one they forget. A quiet rebellion.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

And then I thought that, oh, this is the way. Let me start with.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

It was a simple idea, really. But in China, where culture is managed by the state and identity is treated like a threat, his idea was not so much a school as a quiet rebellion. After the break, Abdoulaye and a handful of toddlers walk into what Beijing authorities would later treat like the most dangerous classroom in China. Stay with us. Support for Click here comes from GiveWell. Let's say you're a detail oriented person. You don't just go to a movie. You read the reviews first. You recon the menu before going to a restaurant. I'm guilty of that. So how do you do your homework when giving to charity? That's where GiveWell comes in. GiveWell is an independent resource doing rigorous and transparent research into charities. They figure out which ones do the most good for every dollar donated, and they only recommend programs with the biggest impact on helping people and saving lives. That's why over 150,000 donors have already trusted them to direct over $2.5 billion to great causes around the world. So check out GiveWell next time you're giving to charity. To make a tax deductible donation Today, go to givewell.org and pick podcast and enter click here at checkout. Make sure they know you heard about GiveWell from click here again, that's givewell.org to donate or find out more.

[Sean Powers]

Do you ever feel like you blinked your eyes and then woke up in some kind of sci fi movie?

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Suddenly it seems like the very existence of AI is changing everything, including our relationships. I would like to think that I could not fall in love with an AI companion, but I really think that anybody could.

[Sean Powers]

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[Dina Temple-Raston]

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[Sean Powers]

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[Dina Temple-Raston]

When Abdoulaye returned to China, he went to work trying to build his kindergarten. He started gathering support, looking for investors, and his pitch was simple.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Look, this is the way to keep our language alive.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

But even that was too bold for some.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

And they already afraid of my idea. Like about this promoting Uyghur language.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Oh, really?

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Yeah. It was a dangerous idea.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Abdoulaye wasn't breaking the rules. He was working in the margins, teaching children in Uyghur before the law had a chance to say he couldn't. The Mandarin language was mandatory in primary school, but for kindergartens, the rules weren't so clear.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

There is no clear policy that kindergarten should use Uyghur should use Chinese, like what language should use in kindergarten.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

So he slipped in through that gap. Finally, his brother took a chance on him and invested $80,000. And then in another stroke of luck, A friend offered him a building for the school. Abdiwale started recruiting just six students to start. And with that, the first Uyghur language kindergarten was born. And they gave it a name that mattered.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

We call it Nurhan means light. Han means king. Light of King.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

It looked like any kindergarten, with nap time and snack time and then music time. The children began each morning with a song and Uyghur. Not a protest song, just a melody in their own tongue. And for Abdoulaye, that was enough. He'd sit in the front row smiling, because this wasn't just music. This was language, alive and out loud. And he had other ideas, unconventional tools to keep Uyghur alive at that time.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

I use Dora.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Dora the Explorer.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Yeah, yeah.

[Cyber Daily Announcer]

Come on.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Dora.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Why I use Dora because there is an English part and there's a Spanish part. Right, right. The Spanish part. I use Uyghur.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Wow, you just dubbed it over.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Yeah.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

It wasn't flashy, but it worked. After a few short months of this, they got some official visitors. State security officers showed up asking for names and phone numbers and the list of parents who dared to send their kids there.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

I expect that happen, but not that quick.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And when they left, what went through your head?

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

I felt happy that they couldn't really understand my writing.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

What do you mean?

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Because I was not only writing about, like the linguistics or kindergarten or something like that. I was writing about also about human rights. What should we think? Why should we think that way?

[Dina Temple-Raston]

He was happy the officers couldn't actually read his curriculum, because he wasn't just teaching Uyghur. Abdoulaye had another goal. To teach kids how to think. Not how to oversight, not how to follow orders, but to ask questions, to wonder and to doubt. Because when he had first started working with the kids, something felt a little off. They didn't act like kids. They followed every instruction immediately, without exception, without complaining. There was no whining, no negotiation, no, oh, please, five more minutes. He'd call out, nap time. And they'd come right in and lie right down. If you've ever met a three year old, you know this isn't how three year olds work. So he pulled one of the parents aside and asked, why? Why are they like this?

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

I said, why? Your kids just listen to my word really carefully. Just not act like a kid. She said it's because of the former kindergarten. If the kids don't listen to them, they just beat them. That's why she's afraid. These kids learned that behavior. It's because of Chinese education.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

In Chinese schools, asking questions and standing out isn't encouraged. It's discouraged, actually. Systematically fitting in isn't just a cultural expectation, it's policy. So obedience is woven into every lesson, right alongside math and reading. And that's what made Abdueli's next decision feel almost radical, maybe even revolutionary. He gave the kids choices. No more forced naps, no more because I said so. They could choose what to eat, whether to sleep, whether to speak. It was a kindergarten, but it was also something else. A place where children were learning what it meant to be free.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

So we didn't only teach kids language, we teach kids how to be an independent human being. We gave them choice.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

So this was a kindergarten, not just of Uyghur ness, but of love as well. Yeah, yeah, it worked. The school took off. Six kids became 24, then 100, then several hundred.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

I didn't do any advertisement, but people, I don't know, how do they learn? And then people started coming from different cities, come, and they recorded the schools, and they make a video. And like, they spread it on their smartphone.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

It spread hand to hand, phone to phone, mother to mother. And the kindergarten stopped being just a kindergarten. It became a movement. They started calling it the Mother Language Movement. A quiet revolution, one classroom at a time. But movements, even quiet ones, don't go unnoticed forever. When they moved to open a second school, the new director did something different. He filed for a permit. The government said no, so he posted the rejection letter online.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

He rejected the local government, and then he posted it online. And then it became a social phenomenon. People all started to talk about it.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And then it went viral. The thing is, Abdiweli never filed for a permit for the first school. He knew they were safer under the radar. But the director of the second school took the opposite approach. Each day he applied again, each day he was denied. And each rejection posted. What started as digital dissent slipped into the real world. People started to gather at the government offices, demanding answers, wanting accountability. And eventually, the government blanked. The school was approved. And while it felt like a win, it wasn't a safe one. Because in going public, the director had crossed a line. One Abdoulaye had spent years carefully navigating. And the response was swift. Police began harassing the staff. One by one, they quit. Then the director himself stepped down. And finally the landlord pulled the lease.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

And then, like, the place we rented, she said that, I'm not going to rent this place anymore. And we said, like, we have five years contract. Our school paralyzed because we can't get that money back.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

They had to shut down, though. Pieces of it were still there. Blankets, toys, stacks of children's clothing in heaps in empty classrooms. Things that kids had touched and played with, but were left behind because their parents were too afraid to retrieve them.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

We had two big rooms full of the students clothes and the students like quilts and the sheets. Two rooms full of those items which students use in daily life. Think about it.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And he did. The movement had grown too quickly, too publicly, and now it felt like it could break or worse, even explode if people heard about the shutdown.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Because look, there are online, 1.5 million people are following us. They will take some action against the government. Bloody clash will happen, and then people will be arrested. And the people who followed the movement will be in trouble in the future. I don't want that happen.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

So he created a story, a way to quiet the tension. He rented a new building nearby and told everyone that the school was simply relocating, nothing to worry about, and invited volunteers to help renovate it. Renovate it for students he knew would never be there.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

And then, like, there are more than 100 people who are helping to renovate the school because it was an old school, deserted, and we are just like, working on electrics and somebody working on the painting, somebody working on, like, installing the toys for the kids. I am doing this, but I know I'm fooling the people.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

He kept up the act to keep the peace and to buy time to figure out his next move. But that time was cut short. One day, during the renovation, a black car pulled up. Security officers stepped out, and Abdoulaye knew exactly who they were, but he stayed in character. He started walking to the car and told the volunteers he'd be just a minute.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

I have visitors there. And don't stop. Keep working. I will talk with them for a while.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And then he shook the men's hands warmly and said loudly so everyone could hear, hi, guys.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Hi. You are the parents will to send your kids to our kindergarten, right?

[Dina Temple-Raston]

But once inside the car, they cuffed him, took his phone, and pulled a black hood over his head. He'd been detained before, but this time it felt different.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

I thought that this is. This is like the ending. Like, I thought, maybe they will kill me.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

This time it felt less like a warning and more like a conclusion. Because when regimes like this feel threatened, they don't tighten the rules, they tighten the news. They don't just detain a man, they. They redefine him as a threat. Abdoulaye wasn't just being questioned. He was about to be turned into an enemy of the state. The police drove him to his house, and soldiers were already there, lining the street with their weapons drawn. His wife stood frozen in the doorway, his children tucked just behind her. As he watched, the soldiers ransacked the house, pulled open drawers, dumped out closets. They took files and devices, anything that looked like it might matter. And when they were done, they took Abdoulaye into custody. What followed was a year in a succession of different jails and hours and hours of interrogation. Sometimes they locked him in a cage in the center of a cell, and two armed guards would be on either side of him. Three interrogators were in front of him, and they would start to scream. You're trying to create a separate country for Uyghurs.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Yes or no? I said no. And you are training resistance force to incite terrorism. Yes or no? No. And you met Uyghur politicians in Washington, and you promised to work with them. Yes or no? No.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And then they reached for their metal batons, slid them under his arms, and.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

Then they put electric shock and turned on the current.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

They did other things, too, but Abdoulaye didn't want to talk about them. Some of it, he said, he'd rather forget. Eventually, he was sentenced. He got 18 months in prison and ended up serving 15. When he walked out, the world he stepped back into wasn't the one he remembered.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

I found, like, the Uyghur homeland changed, like, completely. Just, like day and night, like every Uyghur neighborhood, like, every 500 meters, there's a checkpoint, and every 10 Uyghur family controlled by one guy.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Each block had one guy assigned to watch the families. There were cameras everywhere, making it clear that every word might be recorded. Uyghurs now had to carry a special ID card. And if the authorities had accused you of wrongdoing, every time the card was scanned, a special sound would ring out.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

When you swipe your ID card to get on the bus and then do the sound.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

It was like a scarlet letter, he says, a digital tone that told everyone nearby, this guy has a record. And with that sound came some limits. He couldn't get a job. He couldn't rent a house. He began to fear for his family's life. So when a friend told him about a translator job in Turkey, he didn't hesitate. In 2015, Abdoulaye quietly left the home he'd worked so hard to preserve. And he's been in exile since then, first in Turkey, now in Norway, where he lives with his family. But even from afar, he hasn't stopped trying to help his people. He collects the stories of other Uyghurs who fled. He writes children's books. Stories about memory, about identity, about home. And he keeps telling his own story, even though his family wishes he wouldn't.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

My older brother said that you have to stop and you shouldn't talk because of it will be dangerous for us.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And then he got proof that his brother wasn't just being an alarmist. While visiting a fellow Uyghur exile in Turkey, he got the news his sister had been arrested back in China.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

And I felt really sad. And look, I just walked about 20 kilometers from his home. I walked back to my home. I couldn't even think to take a bus or take a taxi because, yeah, like, Um, it is really hard.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

It was heartbreaking. He knew she'd been arrested not for anything she did, but just for being related to him. This was the regime sending a message. You can run, but your family can't hide. Another attempt to silence him.

[Abdoulaye Ayoob]

But the problem is not only my sister. There are like, all of my friends being arrested. All of my friends, all of the parents who sent their kids to me and they being arrested. And how can I say that, yes, because of my sister, I should stop? What am I doing? They have also family, they have also kids, they have also sister and brothers like me. They know it will be dangerous, but they did to keep the language alive. They told me that this is our last defense. And when their life is in danger, how can I keep silence?

[Dina Temple-Raston]

The schools he built, gone. The first was turned into a re education camp. The loophole he'd once stepped through, closed Mandarin is now the required language for all kindergartens in China. And Abdoulaye Ayoob, the man who tried to save a language through children's songs. And Dora the explorer. He can never go back. So here's the thing about Abdiweli's story. It didn't start with handcuffs. It started with silence. With books quietly disappearing from library shelves, with preschool lessons scrubbed of native words. Before the arrests, before the black hoods and interrogations, the cultural erasure was already underway. And we'd like to think that couldn't happen here. That democracies are different, that our systems are stronger. But that's what Abdoulay's father thought too. Keep your head down, follow the rules, you'll be left alone. And he was wrong. More than a million Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in camps across far western China, cut off from their families, their culture, their language. We asked the Chinese Embassy in Washington about Abdoulay's story, and they wouldn't address his case directly. But in a written statement, a spokesperson said that people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang fully enjoy economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights, and that Xinjiang was a prosperous and stable place. But stability is not freedom, and silence is not peace. This is click here.

[Sean Powers]

Today's episode was written and produced by Megan Dietre, Erica Gaeda, Zach Hirsch, Dina Temple Rastin, and the lead producer was me, Sean Powers. It was edited by Karen Duffin, Fact Checked by Darren Ankrum, and a lot of the music you heard in this episode was Uyghur. It was written and performed by Polot Izy Muff and Ben Levington. We had other music from Blue Dot sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley and our illustrator is Megan Gough. Our sound designer and mixer for this episode was Dante Hodge. Click Here is a production of Recorded Future News and PRX in the second installment of our series.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

More and more, we're seeing that China is still trying to reach outside their borders in order to have that control, so that way they can try for that complete erasure.

[Sean Powers]

That's Friday on Click here's Mic Drop. We'll see you then.

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