Breaking the Rules: This Week Is Family Week

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Breaking the Rules

Drama

A collection of nine dramas about upsetting the status quo.

A collection of nine dramas about upsetting the status quo. What happens when the mark is overstepped, assumptions are upended and the 'norm' is challenged, whether in small but unsettling ways or taking actions that are dangerously transgressive?

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This Week Is Family Week

BBC Radio 4 - Breaking the Rules, This Week Is Family Week

A Uyghur family in Xinjiang are assigned a live-in Chinese 'relative' by the authorities.

Xinjiang Province, China. A Uyghur family are assigned a live-in Chinese 'relative' by the authorities to ensure lifestyle conformity. Drama by Avin Shah inspired by real events.

Xinjiang Province, China. Uyghur student, Nur, is able to 'pass' as Han Chinese, and exploits this as much as possible in a society where Uyghur people live under constant surveillance. 

Nur and her mother, Meryem, want to avoid being sent to one of the re-education prison camps, where it is thought a million people - mostly Uyghur - have been detained without trial. But then they are assigned a live-in Chinese 'relative' by the authorities - Auntie Wang Shu - who comes to stay in their apartment as part of a Family Week initiative to ensure lifestyle conformity: "Cook together, eat together, study together, travel together, sleep together!"

But Wang Shu has other motives, which involve marrying her son to a Uyghur woman. And she has Nur in her sights as a prime candidate. Any missteps by Nur or Meryem could result in their being sent into re-education. But will Nur play by the rules? 

A fictional story inspired by real accounts. Writer Avin Shah has drawn on testimonies from the 2021 independent Uyghur Tribunal (chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice, chief prosecutor on the trial of Slobodan Milošević) and on research by Raminder Kaur, Professor of Anthropology and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex, who served on the tribunal, as well on interviews with other Uyghur and Chinese cultural and political consultants.

Nur......Aruhan Galieva
Meryem.....Camilla Anwar
Guard and various other roles.....Daniel York Loh

Other members of the cast have chosen to remain anonymous.

It was a BBC Audio Wales production, directed by Emma Harding.

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