“Imagine one day, you don’t hear from your husband, or your child. That day turns into a year, a year turns into five years. And still nothing. In Australia and around the world, this is the reality that Uyghurs know all too well.” A Uyghur man living in Australia tweeted on social media, hoping that more people will take action to help reunite Uyghur families that have been confined to the so-called reeducation camps in China.
“Imagine living in a state of perpetual fear of hate, state-sanctioned Islamophobia, and genocide,” said another Uyghur in Canada during the recent worldwide campaign titled #Stand4Uyghurs. Last Sunday, a large group of Uyghur Muslims did their afternoon prayers outside of the Chinese Consulate in Toronto, and hundreds of Muslims performed dhuhr salah (noon prayer)and made dua (calling out to God) for the liberation of the Uyghurs outside the Chinese embassy in London. Such religious practices are banned by the Chinese Communist regime in their hometown.
Imagine three million men, women, and children being confined to a place where surveillance and police are everywhere, including every corner inside their houses. They are imprisoned and persecuted only because they are Uyghurs. When religious practices are forbidden, the government controls not only people’s physical life, but also their spiritual life. Virtually, Uyghurs have no way to escape from the evil regime.
“No Escape” – A Book We All Should Read
In recent years, the Chinese government has rounded up as many as three million Uyghurs, placing them in what it calls “reeducation camps,” facilities most of the world identifies as concentration camps. There, the genocide and enslavement of the Uyghur people are ongoing. The tactics employed are reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, but the results are far more insidious because of the technology used, most of it stolen from Silicon Valley.
Nury Turkel, the cofounder and board chair of the Uyghur Human Rights Project and a commissioner for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), describes the horrible situation of Uyghurs in his book titled No Escape. Mr. Turkel was born in 1970s in a reeducation camp in Xinjiang. Xinjiang means new territory of the Communist China. Many Uyghurs dislike this offensive name, which marks the colonization by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Uyghurs overseas often proudly call their hometown the East Turkistan, which had existed before the CCP announced the birth People’s Republic of China in 1949.
Mr. Turkel was fortunate. He survived the reeducation camp, and eventually made his way to the United States. Thanks to the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” he became the first Uyghur to receive an American law degree. Since then, he has worked as a prominent lawyer, activist, and spokesperson for his people, advocating for strong policy responses from the liberal democracies to address atrocity crimes against his people.
“The Chinese Communist Party has always viewed any type of religion, specifically so-called foreign religions, namely Christianity and Islam, as a sign of disloyalty,” said Mr. Turkel. His book tells his personal story to help explain the urgency and scope of the Uyghur crisis. He paints a picture that is both vivid and unrelenting, of Beijing’s crackdown on Uyghurs and the destruction of their families and the erasure of their culture. As Mr. Turkel describes, “Communist China has created an open prison-like environment through the most intrusive surveillance state that the world has ever known while committing genocide and enslaving the Uyghurs on the world’s watch.”
Modern Slavery – Hundreds of Uyghurs Who Can’t Refuse Forced Labor Transfers
Dr. Timothy Grose, a professor of China Studies with expertise in ethnicity, ethnic policy in China and minority education, conducts research on the Uyghur population in China. He tweeted a photocopy of a list that a middleman posted on Douyin (TikTok in Chinese). The list included the names and ID numbers of 600 Uyghur workers who were just “trained” in the reeducation camps, and advertised them as available laborers to work in any city.
“These 600 Uyghurs can’t refuse forced labor transfers, they can’t refuse the types and conditions of work, and they can’t refuse the long hours of work. They can’t visit or communicate with family members as they wish – It is called modern slavery.” Rushan Abbas, a Uyghur human rights activist, tweeted.
Ms. Abbas is a fighter. She started her activism work while she was a student, organizing and leading in the pro-democracy demonstrations at Xinjiang University in 1985 and 1988. Since her arrival in the United States in 1989, Ms. Abbas has been an ardent campaigner for the human rights of the Uyghur people. In 2017, she founded the Campaign for Uyghurs to advocate for and promote human rights and democratic freedoms for Uyghurs, and mobilize the international community to act to stop the human rights atrocity in East Turkistan.
On September 5, 2018, Ms. Abbas participated on a panel discussion titled “China’s ‘War on Terrorism’ and the Xinjiang Emergency” hosted by the Hudson Institute. Ms. Abbas spoke about the ongoing Uyghur Genocide, and described the camps being used to detain Uyghurs in China. Six days later, one of Abbas’s sisters and an aunt disappeared from their homes in northwest China. They were both detained by the Chinese government as retaliation for her speech.
“It has been 2.5 years, (equals) 915 days, (equals) 21,960 hours since my innocent sister Dr Gulshan Abbas was taken by the CCP and is suffering in a dark dungeon somewhere. That’s 1,317,600 minutes that we’ve been worrying about her, raising her case and millions of the suffering Uyghurs.” Ms. Abbas tweeted during the Ramadan in 2021. The world can hear her crying.
A Tiny Bit of Action for Justice by A Collective May Go a Long Way
Mamutjan is a Uyghur man living in Australia. He had been studying for his doctoral degree in Malaysia before his wife was imprisoned by the CCP. In 2015, his wife Muherrem and two children returned to China to renew Muherrem’s passport. They did not know that China was about to launch an unprecedented crackdown in Xinjiang that would have a horrific impact on the lives of what is estimated to be thousands of parents just like them. Mamutjan hasn’t seen his wife or children since.
His wife has been in detention since 2017 and possibly sentenced to five years or longer in internment camps or prison. His two children have been left without parental care for five years. He has had no communication with his family for five years. “I keep asking myself: how could they torture so many of us for so many years for who we are?!” Mamutjan petitioned the world in a social media post.
Mamutjan reached out to the Australian Department of Home Affairs, but they said they could not help him as he is not a permanent resident. Then, he started his campaign for his families and millions of Uyghur families on the Amnesty International website, “Call for Australia to Reunite Uyghur Families.” So far, he has collected 15,633 signatures, and his goal was 20,000. Mamutjan said on social media, “A tiny bit of action for justice by a collective may go a long way.”
How many tears of Uyghurs do we need to touch and move the world? The Uyghur crisis is turning into the greatest human rights crisis of the twenty-first century, a systematic cleansing of an entire race of people in the millions. More and more people who are enjoying life, liberty, and the right to pursue happiness should urgently act to stop the human rights atrocity in East Turkistan.
“Live Free or Die”
“Live Free or Die” is the state motto of the New Hampshire. The motto derives from a letter written by General John Stark, a war hero who was born in New Hampshire. He was a major general in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Stark led troops at the Battle of Bunker Hill and later at the Battle of Bennington, where a strategic victory earned him the nickname “the Hero of Bennington.”
When he was invited to a reunion of Battle of Bennington veterans, Stark was not well enough to travel. Instead of attending the event in person, he wrote a letter. As an afterword to the letter, Stark included a brief passage to be read as a toast to the veterans: “Live free or die. Death is not the greatest of evils.” In the letter, he described the Bennington veterans as follows:
“They were men that had not learned the art of submission, nor had they been trained to the art of war. But our astonishing success taught the enemies of liberty that undisciplined freemen are superior to veteran slaves.”
The Chinese Communist regime is the enemy of liberty, not only for Chinese, but also for the world. Today’s Uyghur people, like Mamutjan, Mr. Turkel, and Ms. Abbas, have not learned the art of submission, nor have they been trained to the art of war. However, what they are doing is loudly and clearly telling the CCP that they are undisciplined freemen; they do not and will not surrender to the CCP; they do not allow the CCP to enslave their families in China. They are people who live free or die.