A mother is speaking out after Germany deported her 21-year-old Uyghur son to China, a country where members of his ethnic group have faced mass detention and other serious human rights concerns. Guzelay Adil told the Associated Press on Wednesday that her son, Arafat Adil, was removed from Frankfurt Airport on Tuesday.
Arafat Adil holds dual Chinese and Turkish citizenship. His family relocated from China to Turkey in 2017, and he later obtained a Turkish passport in 2024. He had been living in Turkey with his family and was seeking asylum in Germany at the time of his deportation, his mother said.
According to Guzelay Adil, her son touched down in Beijing on Wednesday morning and was immediately taken into custody and questioned by authorities. She said she was holding out hope that he would be permitted to board a flight to Istanbul around midnight on Thursday. “I don’t know what would happen if my son doesn’t return to Turkey,” she said in an interview from Istanbul. “I hope to see my child again.”
Neither German nor Chinese authorities immediately confirmed the deportation. The Interior Ministry of the State of Hesse, where Frankfurt is located, did not respond to a request for comment from the AP.
The German Interior Ministry said there is no general ban on deporting Uyghurs to China, but noted that federal guidelines typically call for protection to be granted to Uyghurs when China is listed as their country of origin.
China’s Foreign Ministry also did not respond to questions about the situation.
Guzelay Adil said she was puzzled by Germany’s decision to send her son to China rather than Turkey, since he held valid passports from both countries. Germany considers Turkey a safe country of origin, and it remains unclear on what grounds Arafat Adil was seeking asylum there.
The news drew immediate criticism from Uyghur rights advocates. Abduweli Ayup, who founded the Norway-based nonprofit Uyghur Hjelp, reacted strongly to the deportation. “It’s heartbreaking to learn of another Uyghur being deported to China,” he said, adding that Germany’s actions as a prominent European Union member were setting a troubling precedent and causing Uyghurs to lose hope “inside and outside of China.”
The case drew comparisons to an incident last November, when Germany deported a Uyghur woman named Reziwanguli Baikeli to China instead of Turkey. Government sources described that case to Der Spiegel magazine as a bureaucratic error. Baikeli was only briefly in Beijing before she was able to travel on to Turkey.
Rights advocates have raised alarm over China’s ongoing campaign in Xinjiang, its far western region that is home to more than 11 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. Beginning in 2017, Beijing launched a campaign of mass detention and alleged forced labor in the area, which had previously seen sporadic unrest over several decades.
China has been pressuring other nations to return Uyghurs who fled during that crackdown. In one of the most significant recent cases, Thailand deported at least 40 Uyghurs to China in February 2025.
