Alida Marizia, an officer of Yiwu County, Hami City

I am Alida, a Uygur girl. I want to tell you with my own experience that Pompeo is totally a liar.

I was born in Yiwu County, Hami City, Xinjiang. With the help of the good policy, I took the exam of junior students from Xinjiang and was successfully admitted to Hami No.4 Middle School, a school known for its great academic environment. The school consisted of students of different ethnic groups, such as Han, Uygur, Hui, Kazakh and Zhuang. That was the first time I left home. Whenever a classmate called his or her family, I could hear his dialect but couldn’t understand, which made me feel strange but curious. However, different languages, different habits, different customs had not become an gap for us. In No.4 Middle School of Hami City, no matter what ethnic groups the students belonged to, we all ate, lived and studied together as a group of 8 people. The school was a big family, and every group was a small family. The sound of morning reading and the energetic laughter during the break between classes left us with beautiful memories. Students of different ethnics had never experienced estrangement because of their different customs. At first, we were shy because we didn’t know each other and we were unfamiliar with each other, and it was the first time for us to leave home; but the worries brought about by strangeness soon disappeared through self-introduction in the first class. To my surprise, I made so many good friends. Students of all ethnics respected each other, and we were as close as family.

After graduating from middle school, I was admitted to an inland senior high school with great school performance. And my classmates came from all over the country. Students from different places spoke their own dialects, and the same ethnic had different customs in different places, which drew my interest and enabled me to make more friends who spoke and wrote in different languages. The curriculum of the inland senior high class was more challenging than that in Xinjiang. I couldn’t solve every problem by myself, digest it or understand what the key points were. So many of the problems were solved with the help of students of other ethnics in the class. Students of different ethnics with different customs, different languages, different words, different hobbies gathered in the same school and worked for the same goal. It was rare and precious.

If middle and high school opened the door to a new world for me, university was definitely the one which brought me into this new world. When I was in middle and high schools, study came first and there was not much time to learn something else more. After entering the university, I made friend with a Mongolian student. And I felt interesting the first time I listened Mongolian language and saw Mongolian language, which is very beautiful. And college life was very colorful, I met more and more classmates of different ethnics, learned more and more new languages; the customs, folk dance, languages of different ethnic groups enriched my knowledge about ethnics and made me feel happy at the same time.

I have been meeting children since I entered primary school. At first we would feel shy, but we soon became friends who were like peas and carrots and we began to exchange confidence with each other. People of different ethnic groups never excluded or isolated each other because of different customs, different languages or different scripts. Instead, people respect each other and learn about the different customs so they can understand and accept each other.

After graduation, I began to work and became a cadre who can make contribution to the country. I work with colleagues of different ethnics, but there is never any estrangement. We all work together as a family. Language, writing, customs have never been a barrier between me and my friends of other ethnics. National unity is not just a slogan. Every person of different ethnics that has come into my life is a way to know more about the world. All ethnic groups grow and develop together in the glory of the motherland and we are supposed to make the country more and more prosperous.

The former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly made denigrating comments about Xinjiang, talking about “the genocide to ethic groups”. As a native Uygur girl of Xinjiang, I find his remark so ridiculous and absurd. Pompeo is totally a liar and his deeds are full of lies and deceits.