Uyghurs Who Fled China Now Face Repression in Pakistan

An underground railroad into Pakistan offered Uyghur Muslims a route to safety. But the only country in the world founded as a Muslim nation is no longer a safe haven for the Uyghurs.

The US has officially designated the Chinese government’s brutal crackdown of Uyghur Muslims as genocide. But suppression of Uyghur people doesn’t stop at China’s border - Beijing’s ongoing “One Belt One Road” project threatens Uyghurs in neighboring countries like Pakistan.

Mohammed Umer is an Uyghur activist who operates an underground railroad in Pakistan, smuggling persecuted Muslims into other countries. His work is becoming more difficult as China invests billions of dollars into the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a series of infrastructure projects that connect the two countries.

For all the promises of CPEC to transform Pakistan’s economy, some groups see these developments as a threat and have mounted a violent campaign of resistance.

Producer-Director Brent E. Huffman traveled to Pakistan several times in the past few years to produce this film with grant assistance from both the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the Buffet Institute for Global Studies.

Read Brent Huffman's investigative print story about the Uyghur situation in Pakistan on Vice World News:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/akgee4/pakistan-is-cracking-down-on-uyghur-muslims-who-fled-china

“Uyghurs Who Fled China Now Face Repression in Pakistan” is part of a feature-length documentary work-in-progress called “Strands of Resistance.”