Stefan Höjelid

One spring day towards the end of the cold war, a time of surprises, my teleprinter shuddered into action. A colleague in Beijing was sending a message: members of an ethnic group called the Uygurs, of whom I had never heard, were demonstrating in the streets of Urumqi, capital of the northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang. The protesters were denouncing the communist leadership in Beijing and chanting the name of an exiled leader said to be living in Turkey, a man named ‘Isa’. My colleague had a simple and urgent question: Could I trace Isa down?”