A poet's account of one of the world's most urgent humanitarian crises and a harrowing tale of
a family's escape from genocide One by one Tahir Hamut Izgil's friends disappeared. The
Chinese government's brutal persecution of the Uyghur people had continued for years but in
2017 it assumed a terrifying new scale. The Uyghurs a predominantly Muslim minority group in
western China were experiencing an echo of the worst horrors of the twentieth century
amplified by China's establishment of an all-seeing high-tech surveillance state. Over a
million people have vanished into China's internment camps for Muslim minorities. Tahir a
prominent poet and intellectual had been no stranger to persecution. After he attempted to
travel abroad in 1996 police tortured him until he confessed to fabricated charges and sent
him to a re-education through labor camp. But even having endured three years in the camp he
could never have predicted the Chinese government's radical solution to the Uyghur question two
decades later. Was the first sign when Tahir was interrogated for hours after a phone call with
a fellow poet in the Netherlands? Or when his old friend was sentenced to life in prison simply
for calling for Uyghurs' legal rights to be enforced? Perhaps it was when the police seized
Uyghurs' radios and installed jamming equipment to cut them off from the outside world. Once
Tahir noticed that the park near his home was nearly empty because so many neighbors had been
arrested he knew the police would be coming for him any day. One night after Tahir's
daughters were asleep he placed by his door a sturdy pair of shoes a sweater and a coat so
that he could stay warm if the police came for him in the middle of the night. It was clear to
Tahir and his wife that fleeing the country was the family's only hope. Waiting to Be Arrested
at Night is the story of the political social and cultural destruction of Tahir Hamut Izgil's
homeland. Among leading Uyghur intellectuals and writers he is the only one known to have
escaped China since the mass internments began. His book is a call for the world to awaken to
the unfolding catastrophe and a tribute to his friends and fellow Uyghurs whose voices have
been silenced--
