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April 2022 Issue [Letter from Istanbul]

The Spies Next Door

China’s covert campaign to intimidate Uighur exiles
Illustrations by Danijel Žeželj

Illustrations by Danijel Žeželj

[Letter from Istanbul]

The Spies Next Door

China’s covert campaign to intimidate Uighur exiles
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Adiljan Abdurrahim woke up in his one-bedroom Istanbul apartment on March 28, 2016, without much to do. This was how it was most days, but he put on his sleek black suit jacket all the same. Exile had taken nearly everything from him—his family, his homeland, his thriving jade business in the Ürümqi Grand Bazaar—and left him with sporadic, lonely work buying Turkish clothing for a company back in Xinjiang. Yet it hadn’t dulled his sense of enterprise, or the care he took with his appearance. He was still the kind of man who kept an eye out for…

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 lives in Istanbul.


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April 2022

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