By Risha Chaurasia
“From every mountainside let freedom ring,” Said Martin Luther King in his renowned ‘I have a Dream Speech. 57 years have passed, still, this dream remains far from reality.
This piece is on a suppressed and heart-wrenching topic, the Uighur Muslims.
The Uyghurs or Uighurs are an ethnic minority hailing from the north-western district of Xinjiang in China. Over 19 million Uighur Muslims live in this district and their life is far from good. Facing scarcity of basic necessities like water, food, and shelter, these people live in fear. Imagine spending every moment of the day fearing your fate, fearing when you will be taken off to those quote-unquote ‘re-education camps.’
These so-called re-education camps are basically concentration camps, where over a million Uighur Muslims are imprisoned. These are highly secure camps that are supposed to give anti-extremist training to the Uighurs and many other minorities. These camps have broken thousands of families and separated kids from their parents, destroying their childhood.
Recently, a video of a man called Merdan Ghappar went viral and this video provided a first-hand glimpse into the torturous loves that these Muslims are subjected to. This video is filmed in a grubby room with only a metal bed in the name of furniture to which Mr. Medhan is handcuffed. In the background, public announcements can be heard saying “Xinjiang has never been an ‘East Turkistan,”. Mr. Medhan was a famous and successful model until he was taken off to one of the detention camps, where this video was shot. His career was demolished and now his life is confined to the small room. He is just one of the thousands of young lives being destroyed in these camps.
It’s high time, the international community steps up and the global leaders act as leaders. For once, let’s put our differences and politics aside and try to better the lives of these people.
From the UNHRP website: https://uhrp.org/what-you-can-do
How you can help
Contact your Congressional representatives to urge them to co-sponsor the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act
Join the Uyghur Lobby Days in August 2020 supporting the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act
Endorse the global campaign for fashion brands to end complicity in Uyghur forced labour. The Call to action on human rights abuses in the Uyghur Region in the apparel and textiles sector is supported to date by 230+ trade unions, investors, NGOs, Uyghur groups, and faith-based groups.
--> Organizations can endorse here https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfjkXyB1_dKTckcVW2EULnaQYEv_5E_IyxPdCxZKh-EriUPUg/viewform
Sign these petitions:
Freedom United: Free Uyghur Muslims from forced labor
Avaaz: Free the Uyghurs
No Rights. No Games. The choice is simple: Respect Uyghur rights and close the camps, or lose the Olympics.
Petition for the immediate release of professor Rahile Dawut and other Uyghur scholars
Donate to UHRP to support their work:
Providing emergency humanitarian relief for Uyghur refugees
Interviewing concentration camp survivors to help tell their story to the world
Campaigning to end "business as usual" while Uyghurs are suffering crimes against humanity
Source: https://www.saveuighur.org/
Contact your elected representative
Use Save Uighur's advocacy Tool and call, email or tweet at your representative to support the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, to ensure that forced labor goods from East Turkestan (Xinjiang) do not enter the United States.
Write and call the Chinese Embassy at chinaembpress_us@mfa.gov.cn
Ask them to shut down concentration camps, give religious freedom and repect and provide for families of Uighurs
Volunteer
Organize advocacy groups and fundraisers
Use social media to amplify advocacy
Boycott Chinese made products– lobby for your country to keep force labour goods out of the market
Encourage and promote fairer trade and commerce with Muslims and others rather than China
Build alliances with all people of conscience to demand a cessation of China’s oppression of all faith groups, be it Muslim Uyghur, Hui, Christian or Tibetan Buddhist
Inquire about Uyghur diaspora members in your area. Organize to help out orphans, widows, and students
Pressure governments to provide legal protection to Uyghur refugees-exiles by either citizenship or refugee-asylee status. Stop the “extradition-repatriation” of Uyghurs to China!
Get your universities-endowments to divest from China. Raise awareness about Chinese espionage and hired guns in academia. Demand academic and financial support for Uyghur scholars and students. Request more academic attention and funds for Central Asian, Uyghur, Turkistani studies.
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