I had posted my first text on Bagdax.com (also Bagdax.cn) in 2008, it was a website which provided platform for young Uyghurs. When I started to write for Uyghur forums, Baxdax was just ordinary one. There were other strong forums which had more followers than local government’s TV stations.
I heard Ekpar paid the price on July 5th, the demonstration happened in Urumchi cost almost 200 lives in 2009, he was briefly detained, and Bagdax.com was shut down almost a year, since he did not participate in the protest, but the members involved.
When I started mother language movement with my friend Dilyar Obul, we used Bagdax as a platform. In September 2012, my friend Dilyar Obul posted his proposal and application which he submitted to Urumchi municipal education department on Bagdx, his goal was for getting people’s attention.
Dilyar chose doing that way to let people follow the process of having permission to hold a Uyghur language kindergarten. He used Bagdax as a platform. After posting, it got a strong reaction, because Urumchi local education department refused his application.
The post said, there was a Chinese lady she was working for education department said it is not possible to hold Uyghur language kindergarten. Such a rejection from the local administration triggered frustration among the Uyghurs.
The rejection was not unexpected, but the reaction from the Uyghurs surprised me. After application was rejected by local administration, huge outrage covered Uyghur social media. There were 500, 0000 people kept following the post.The popularity of the Bagdax reached its peak. It became the most famous, the most influential website among Uyhgurs with more than 100, 000 registered members.
I met Ekpar Asat (a.k.a Ekber Eset) during the time in 2012 October, in a homelike Uyghur restaurant close to his office. Ekpar was also CEO of Bagdax Electron company which served IT technological assistance to the private companies. We became good friends after a while.
As Bagdax had attracted international attention after the mother language movement harassed by the Chinese police several times. He told me that he does not need to administrate the forum, Guobao was administrating. Guobao was a really popular phrase at that time. You need to deal with GuoBaou, the Chinese national security branch for your idea crimes, for openly criticizing human rights abuses, linguistics rights of Uyghurs.
The website published some posts about discriminatory ethnic and language policy, language protection, the unfair reality of Uyghurs was facing alongside of between November 2012 to August 2013. In 2012, when the US ambassador in China visited Urumqi, he asked to meet with Ekpar, but the Chinese government used some unreasonable excuses and refused to let the ambassador meet the Ekpar Asat.
In August 2013, the Bagdax was shut daown after my arrestment, Ekpar was questioned, the company was investigated and closed for six months just for support for the Uyghur mother language movement to protect the Uyghur Language.
I suddenly received the message that Ekpar and other managers were detained on April 7th, 2016. The one who sent the message disappeared after telling me what happened. I talked to some other friends, unfortunately they confirmed the sad news.
At that time, I tried to find the journalists to write his stories, since I spent a few weeks, I could not find anyone to talk about him, I knew I should do something, but I did not know what to do. In 2016, there was no international coverage, there was no international attention to Uyghur cause. At the end only Radio Free Asia, a Washington based news outlet reported his story. From 2020, his sister started talking about him, at that time he was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.
His sister, Rayhan Asat said he is serving his prison term in Aksu, However, there is no clear information about Ekpar Asat, about his wellbeing, health, daily life… like millions of Uyghurs.
