I remember those days vividly. My father would gather us in the dead of night and begin tuning our old radio, searching for foreign broadcasts to find out what was happening in our homeland, where we lived. Due to the Chinese Communist Party’s strict media control and harsh punishment for those who sought outside information, this was an act of defiance.
At the time, the only source of information for the Uyghur people was propaganda in the state-run media. Yet, despite the risks, we longed to hear the truth. In our home in the capital, Urumqi, we had a microwave-sized radio with glowing tubes inside. My father would carefully fine-tune it by hand each night. Sometimes the signal was clear; other times it was full of static. But it was the only source of free news from the outside world.
