During the rush to wrap things up, Wali received a call informing him that his eldest brother had been abducted. “My brother’s wife hadn’t heard from him for quite a few days. She was informed by a few close friends of my brother that he had been kidnapped by local authorities,” Wali told The Diplomat.
Abdul Wali belongs to a Uyghur Muslim family originally hailing from Dabancheng district of Urumqi, the capital of China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. His father moved to Pakistan in the 1960s amidst China’s initiation of curbs on Uyghur culture and the locals’ practice of Islam. After doing a few small-time jobs he established an export business and married a Pakistani woman, Wali’s mother, a few years after moving to the country, eventually inviting some members of the extended family to move to Pakistan as well.
