Read a version of this story in Uyghur
In 1986, a Uyghur kebab vendor found a Chinese baby in a cardboard box on his way home from work. Now Abdulla Tomur is willing to do anything to get Zohregul – the abandoned girl he raised as his daughter – released from a Chinese prison.
Abdulla hasn’t been back to the Uyghur region since a year before Chinese authorities began their large-scale “anti-terrorism” Uyghur internment campaign in 2017, during which Zohregul was arrested.
From Istanbul, Turkey, where he currently resides, Abdulla tells Radio Free Asia the story of his first encounter with Zohregul, and how he now feels powerless to help his imprisoned daughter.
Cries from a cardboard box
At the time when he found Zohregul, Abdulla had been operating a market stall in Guizhou province, far away from Kucha (in Chinese, Kuche), Aksu prefecture (Akesu), his hometown in the Uyghur region. The family had relocated to southern China due to economic hardship.
One day, after packing up his kebab equipment, he started to return home, but stopped when he heard a baby crying.
The sound came from a cardboard box left in front of a hospital. He hurried toward it, finding what appeared to be an abandoned Han Chinese baby girl.
At first he was hesitant. He thought about what his wife might say. They were already struggling to support their two young sons. He imagined her asking how they could possibly feed a third child when poverty had driven them to move so far away.
He started toward home again, but the thought of the crying baby tugged at his heartstrings.
Though the baby was left in front of the hospital, Abdulla said he had reason to believe those inside already knew she had been abandoned, and because he did not speak Chinese, communicating with them would have been difficult.
So, he decided it would be easier to take the baby and hand her over to the authorities later. He lifted her from the box, wrapped her in the cloth he used to cover his kebab meat, and carried her home.
His wife’s response was nothing like the one he had feared.
Instead of scolding him, she condemned the people who had abandoned the infant.
“How could anyone leave an innocent baby like this?” she asked.
She began breastfeeding the girl. The crying subsided, and the baby fell asleep.
The couple planned to care for her for three days before taking her to the authorities. By the fourth day, they had changed their minds.
Their sons, aged three and five, were already attached to their new companion. Abdulla recalled that they put aside their toys and gathered around her.
The parents decided to keep her until she was about a year old, then hand her over to the authorities when they returned to their hometown in the Aksu area.
But by her first birthday, she was their daughter, and a sister to their sons.
“How could we hand over a child who called us ‘Dad’ and ‘Mom’?” Abdulla said.
Eventually the family returned to the Uyghur region and registered Zohregul as their daughter with authorities there. At the time it was relatively common in China to register children years after they were born. And telling authorities that Zohregul was Han Chinese and that they had taken her in would have invited scrutiny and red tape, so they simply said she was theirs.
The family secret
Zohregul grew up in Kucha, in a Uyghur household, as a native speaker of the Uyghur language, and a follower of the Muslim religion – an upbringing firmly anchored in Uyghur culture.
The family’s remaining concern was how people in their community might react if they learned Zohregul was Han Chinese.
Abdulla feared that his neighbors, who considered the Chinese presence in the Uyghur homeland to be an occupation, would be bothered by his family raising a Chinese child.
He had already formulated a response – rooted in his Muslim faith – should anyone confront the family over their decision.
“Our religion teaches that every child is born innocent,” he said. “This child is pure and innocent. Her blood relationship to those who oppress us was not her choice. She is one of God’s servants.”
Still, he doubted that this explanation would satisfy everyone, so he and his wife decided to keep Zohregul’s origins a family secret.
A family divided
In 2016, Abdulla traveled to Turkey to visit his eldest son, who was studying in Istanbul. When the mass arrests by the Chinese government under the “Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism” intensified the next year in the Uyghur region, he wanted to return home. Abdulla had already been sent to a camp the year before for “illegal gathering.” He said that while incarcerated, he was deprived of sleep and forced to confess to alleged illegal activities by himself or his neighbors.
But Abdulla’s son urged him to stay, fearing that his father too would be detained again. From Istanbul, Abdulla worried constantly about his children at home, especially Zohregul. He had nightmares of seeing her in handcuffs.
Eventually, an acquaintance told Abdulla that both Zohregul and his younger son Rehim were in prison. As with many other detentions by Chinese authorities at the time, no official reason was given.
Upon hearing this, a father’s first impulse was to return home immediately. But Abdulla realized he would be unable to help either child if he returned and became imprisoned himself.
At first, he convinced himself that the detentions could not continue indefinitely.
“How could they keep so many people for so long?” he recalled thinking. “Surely they would release them.”
Revealing the truth
In 2020, three years after learning about his children’s detentions, Abdulla – still in Turkey – began trying to secure their release. He participated in demonstrations outside the Chinese Consulate in Istanbul, appearing in media interviews, and trying to find more information.
When six years of those efforts yielded no results, he took to social media and made a direct appeal to Chinese authorities.
“I am an uneducated farmer,” he said. “I have not participated in political activities here. Please give me information about my children. If they are in prison, release them.”
He offered to return to the Uyghur region to resume farming, or submit to imprisonment himself.
“At least release my innocent daughter, Zohregul,” he pleaded.
Abdulla said the appeal circulated on Facebook and then on Douyin – the Chinese version of TikTok – where it received more than 50,000 views.
Four people contacted him, claiming to be consular personnel, customs officers, or police.
They said they would help, but the conversations soon turned to requests for information about Uyghurs in Syria and Afghanistan. Abdulla said he knew nothing and could not provide them with any information.
During one conversation, out of desperation, he disclosed that Zohregul was an adopted Han Chinese child and asked the caller to relay that information to officials in Aksu.
Abdulla hoped her ancestry might make a difference. During his years in Kucha, he had seen officials pay particular attention to Chinese settlers’ safety. He also recalled authorities rewarding Uyghur families who adopted Chinese children as part of “ethnic unity” campaigns.
One Chinese officer showed interest after learning the family secret, Abdulla said. But the officer only told him that Zohregul had received a 12-year sentence and had three years remaining.
The officer also told him to return to China and “repent” before they could discuss his daughter’s situation further.
An RFA investigation in September 2026 determined that the officer who told Abdulla about his daughter’s imprisonment worked in Kucha’s Ogen (Weigan) township. A different police officer in Kucha’s Alaqagha (Alahage) township separately confirmed to RFA that two members of Abdulla’s family were imprisoned, including Zohregul.
RFA was also able to get official confirmation why Zohregul was punished. It was because her father had traveled to Turkey, which Beijing considers to be a “sensitive country” and because she read “illegal” religious materials that originate from outside China.
China maintains excessive travel restrictions for Uyghurs, bans religious materials from abroad, and punishes family members through a policy of guilt by association.
A family tragedy
Zohregul has now been imprisoned for nine years.
Given his own brief detention by the Chinese authorities, Abdulla worries about how she could endure interrogation, mistreatment and the restrictions of confinement, although the available information does not confirm her current conditions.
He said he was caught between the urge to return and the fear that doing so would put another member of the family behind bars.
Abdulla is currently on a pilgrimage to Mecca, and before leaving, he said he would carry those fears in his prayers.
The abandoned baby he once lifted from a roadside box is still his daughter, he said. But the compassion that enabled him to bring her home in 1986 cannot open her prison door.
“O Allah, I had the strength to rescue Zohregul from a cardboard box,” he said, explaining what he says when he prays. “But I do not have the strength to rescue her from an iron cage. Forgive me. Forgive my sins.”
Translated by Shohret Hoshur. Edited by Eugene Whong and Charlie Dharapak.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.