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Category: Announcements (Page 1 of 11)

Welcome!!!

Hi Everyone,
Welcome to CUNY! Letā€™s share a little bit about our passions and hopes.
For myself, I love reading, writing for fun, dogs, designing crazy cakes, playing with children, particularly silly ones, and teaching literature about monsters like Frankenstein and Dracula. I also have a son who keeps me on my toes ALL THE TIME!History of Teaching: I have been teaching at New York City College of Technology for nineteen years (possibly since before you were bornā€”yikes!) I love working with students on their writing, and have come up with a few tricks over the years that I look forward to sharing with youā€¦

My education: I went to college at Boston University and then received an MFA from Columbia.Ā  Both schools were excellent, but I felt oddly more involved at BU, a bigger school but with more encouraging professors.Ā  I loved college and felt excited about possibly staying in it forever, so I became a professor.

Struggles: When I was in college, I was disorganized and confused, always skipped orientations and then was confused when I was disoriented. I usually had to rely on good luck to get assignments turned in on time, or to have a pen to take notes (that took real luck). Now Iā€™m wildly organized and have folders and planners and all kinds of alarms and notifications to keep me on the straight and narrow. So if you ever struggle with just plain oleā€™ manageability, please feel free to reach out to me! I know how it feels and I know how to help.

But the most important thing to know about me is that I love teaching. I am so happy that I get to work with you and my hope is that I can help you through this trying time. The fact that you chose to enroll in college during these unprecedented challenges says a lot about your characters. I am thrilled that I get to work with you this semester.
WELCOME.

Please post your own introductions here in the comments section!

Unit 3 project

In unit 2Ā  project I decided to write about the Uighur andĀ  Kazakhs people being held in the re-education camp in China. I chose this topic because I think this issue is one of the biggest issues going on now in the world. And I personally think people need to talk about this issue more. In my unit 2 project I provide evidences from sources that shows how China is taking awayĀ  the Uighur Muslim people from their family and lock them up in the re-education camp. China is telling everyone that these people are getting education in the camp and these camps are not dangerous for them. But In the artiles so many of them have explained and confessed the tortured they have faced in the camp. They also said how they are being forced to learn chinese language and being forced to sing chinese songs that praise the communist party. I wanted to talk about these people that are getting punished to death. I have interested in this topic because I think as a Muslim I should spread this issue to the whole world.Ā 

Ā Artist Statement

I have chosen to write this topic so through my project many people will get to know about the issue currently held in the re-education camp in China. In my unit 3 project I want people to speak about this topic and try to spread this topic in the world as much as I can. Mainly I want to share my unit 2 project to my college students first by posting my project in my every college group or if I can I want to post it on my college site. Because I think through many students this issue can spread fast and take place in society as a serious issue. I also want to spread this issue through social media. I want to share about the Uighur Muslim people are being held in the camp and being tortured by positing many pictures,Ā many sources and explanations on this issue. And also IĀ  want to ask people to share it with others. Because I think in this situation social media is the way how this issue will reach people and hopefully they will start talking about it again. Because Uighur/Kazashs people are still in the camp and as humans they need to be free. By posting this issue on social media I want to spread awareness about this issue.Ā 

 

Unit-2 about Uighur Muslim being held in the re-education camp in China.

ā€œUighur crackdown: ‘I spent seven days of hell in Chinese camps’.ā€

By Abdujalil Abdurasulov, 12 February, 2019.Ā 

BBC News, Almaty.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47157111

In the article Aibota Serik says her father has disappeared into chinaā€™s network of detention centres. The Chinese government calls them free “vocational training centres”, Aibota Serik, a Chinese Kazakh whose father was sent to one, calls them prisons. Aibota Serikā€™s father Kudaybergen Serik was a local imam in Tarbagatay (Tacheng) prefecture of China’s western Xinjiang region. In February 2018 the police detained him and Aibota hasn’t heard from her father since then. She says,Ā  I don’t know why my father was imprisoned. ” He didn’t violate any laws of China, he was not tried in a court,” clutching a small photo of him, before breaking down in tears.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has heard there are credible reports that around one million people have been detained in internment camps in Xinjiang, China. Almost all of them are from Muslim minorities such as the Uighurs, Kazakhs and others. There are more than a million Kazakhs living in China. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, thousands moved to oil-rich Kazakhstan, encouraged by its policy to attract ethnic Kazakhs. Today, these people feel cut off from their relatives who stayed in China.Ā 

Nurbulat Tursunjan uulu, who moved to the Almaty region in 2016, says his elderly parents are unable to leave China and come to Kazakhstan because the authorities took away their passports. In the picture he is holding his parents pictures in his hand.Ā  Another petitioner, Bekmurat Nusupkan uulu, says that relatives in China are afraid to talk on the phone or on the popular Chinese messaging app WeChat. He also said that his father-in-law visited him in February, 2018. From that place (Kazakhstan) he called his son whoā€™s name is Baurzhan in China and asked him how he was and so on. Shortly after that his son Baurzhan was detained. He was told that he had received phone calls from Kazakhstan two or three times and thatā€™s why heĀ  was sent to a political camp.Ā 

They are putting these Uighur people in the camp without any due process rights – neither charged nor put on trial – and have no access to lawyers and family.Ā  Orynbek Koksybek is an ethnic Kazakh who spent several months in camps. Koksybek says he spent seven days of hell. His hands were handcuffed, his legs were tied. They threw him in a pit. He raised his both hands and looked above. At that moment, they poured water and he started screaming. ā€œ I don’t remember what happened next. I don’t know how long I was in the pit but it was winter and very cold. They said I was a traitor, that I had dual citizenship, that I had a debt and owned land.” None of that was true, he says. He is being accused for what he never had done. Ā A week later Mr Koksybek was taken to a different place where they forced him to learn chinese language andĀ songs. He learnt Chinese songs and language. He was told he would leave if he learnt 3,000 words. In China they call it re-education camps to teach people but if they wanted to educate, why do they handcuff people? They detain Kazakhs because they’re Muslims. China’s aim is to turn Kazakhs into Chinese. They want to erase the whole ethnicity. This article shows how In the re-education camp in China people such as Uighur and Kazakhs are being tortured and getting punished.Ā 

ā€œI am an Uighur who faced Chinaā€™s concentration camps. This is my story.ā€

Ā Victor Jack, friday october 16, 2020. (Varsity.co.UK)

https://www.varsity.co.uk/interviews/19990

This article is about an Uighur Muslim Omir Bekali, a 41 years old manĀ  whoā€™s exposing the china re-education camp by telling his own experience in the re-education camp. In the article Victor Jack was taking an interview with Omir Bekali an Uighur Muslim who recounts his imprisonment, torture and indoctrination at the hands of the Chinese state. In early 2017, Omir had a good life. He is a proud father of three kids, he had a Tourism degree, a small business and several managerial positions under his belt. Omir was planning to lead the Kazakh delegation to the upcoming international Astana Trade Exposition, an event which typically draws in millions. But in march to promote the event he took a trip to Xinjiang, northwest China. During a short post-work visit to his family in nearby Turpan, on the morning of the 26th March, policemen showed up at the door to arrest him. This was the beginning of his eight month journey of unending physical and psychological torment. Omir says, ā€œThey shackled my hands and put black fabric [over] my eyes,ā€ Ó¦mir says. ā€œI feel my body tremble whenever I remember that momentā€. Omir was born in Ā Xinjiang, China and he is from an Uighur family. Economic, cultural and religious discrimination against Uighurs had been brewing for decades. In 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a new ā€œPeopleā€™s War on Terrorā€ aimed at fighting regional ā€˜terroristsā€™ and ā€˜separatistsā€™.

After Omir got arrested without any explanation, he was thrown into a small police station cell. OmirĀ  says the room seemed to be built for 12 people, but contained more than 36 others like him, had their arms and legs constantly shackled. Then he was transferred to another police station where he got tortured by the authorities for four complete days. Omir explained the torture he got in the police cell by saying that ā€œThey put needles in between my nails and my fingers,ā€ he adds, ā€œthen they put iron sticks into my sexual organsā€. His feet and hisĀ  hands were tied up with iron shackles and he also got beaten in the cell. They beat hisĀ  hands, his feet, his back and his stomachā€. Omir says he was put into a ā€˜Tiger Chairā€™ for long periods, a metal seat-like contraption which restricts movement. Police also hung him from the roof of the cell by his wrists so his feet could not touch the floor, and later smashed his knuckles with hammer-like instruments. In the picture the scars are still there on his hand. Omir says ā€œI did not confess anything because I hadnā€™t done anything,ā€ he says. ā€œMaybe they thought after torture I would just confess something I had never done beforeā€. After spending seven months locked up with no access to lawyers, no phones or communication with his family and without any explanation of his arrest Omir was moved to a nearby, highly-fortified prison camp.Ā 

In November 2017, Omir was transportedĀ  to his final destination (the re-education camp). There are 40 people in a 16 square-metre room. Prisoners as young as 15 and as old as 80 are placed into these cramped cells. Twenty-four hours a day, prisoners are shackled. Iron chains are tied around their necks, fixed to lose iron blocks that Omir says weigh around eight to ten kilograms, forcing prisoners to always be hunched down. He stayed in that room with lots of different people, some of them are businesspeople, historians, school professors, writers, singers and many others.they speak much better Chinese than Chinese people themselvesĀ  and they have more money than Chinese themselves. This shows thatĀ  they donā€™t need to be re-educated. They are then forced to repeatedly sing songs which praise the Chinese Communist party, stress Chinaā€™s greatness, and show gratitude towards President Xi Jinping personally. Prisoners are constantly warned about 48 characteristics considered hostile to the Chinese state, which include growing beards, praying and religious charity-giving. The aim of these drills is clear, Omir says: ā€œbecome Han Chinese ā€¦ forget your religion, forget your cultureā€. If you donā€™t listen to them you will get punished and tortured to death.

As Omir often expressed his discontent with his arrest, he found himself tortured and beaten half to death. They made him stand facing a wall for twenty-four hours without food or drink on some occasions. In the article there is a picture of Omir one day before he got arrested and ten days after he got released from the camp and the changes of Omir face in the picture shows the tortured he faced in the camp and how these tortures have affected his health. Omir says in his statement that ā€œThe Chinese government calls them re-education camps. Actually there are no re-education camps – all are concentration camps.ā€ After 20 days, Omir was finally released. Omir says he doesn’t know in the future he can get back into his normal life but he is hoping that students can organise more protests, write more news about Uighurs, and raise the awareness of the general public. This article proved that these re-education camp made to torture to death the Uighur Muslim people not to re-educate them.Ā 

 

 

 

 

Final Reflection..

I have always loved my english class because I think english class is the only class where I can share my experiences. This is my first english class and first semester in college. Even though we weren’t able to go to our campus and we didnā€™t get any chance to learn together in person as a class, I still think I have learned so many things in this class so far. I got the chance to share my experiences in schools. I got the chance to share my good trouble and my bad trouble. I have read so many articles and I also got the chance to explain them. I got the chance to share my thoughts on articles or on any specific topic. I have created my own poem and I put my feelings in the poem. I finished three projects: unit 1, unit 2 and unit 3. And I think I have learned so many different things by doingĀ  these projects which are going to help me in the future.I shared with the whole class what I think about discrimination and rasicm. I also shared the difficulties that I had to face because of the online classes especially as a freshman in college. At the end I would like to say thank you to our professor (prof.Edelson) for understanding our situation and for giving us enough time to finish our assignments.Ā 

 

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