Podcast Summary: "Erased: Saving the Uyghur Internet"
Podcast: Click Here (Recorded Future News)
Date: August 22, 2025
Host/Reporter: Dina Temple-Raston (with reporting by Sean Powers)
Overview
This episode dives into the story of Ridat Kenji, a software engineer living in Japan, who is on a mission to digitally resurrect the Uyghur Internet—an online world that the Chinese government has worked to systematically erase. Through personal accounts, historical context, and technical challenges, the episode explores the critical efforts to preserve Uyghur cultural memory online and the creative resistance tactics of Uyghur people under censorship.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. The Digital Erasure of Uyghur Culture
- Internet as a battleground: The episode opens with the notion that the Internet, commonly assumed to be permanent, is in fact fragile—subject to memory loss, broken links, and, in the case of the Uyghur community, deliberate erasure by the Chinese state ([01:22]).
- Background: The crackdown intensified after the July 2009 protests in Urumqi, which led to a total Internet blackout in Xinjiang for 10 months. When connectivity returned, much of the Uyghur digital landscape—news, music, forums—was gone ([03:47]).
2. Personal Stories of Disappearance and Surveillance
- Johar Ilham’s Account: Johar Ilham, a Uyghur activist in the US and daughter of Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, describes the chilling aftermath:
“Everybody reaching out to him said, my son disappeared. My cousin disappeared. Or this disappeared. The Chinese government took them. We don't know if he's alive.” – Johar Ilham ([04:49]) - Targeting Prominent Uyghurs: Ilham Tohti’s website, Uyghur Online, became a key cultural hub before it was erased; Ilham was persecuted for giving Uyghurs a rare platform for free expression ([03:47], [04:49]).
3. Ridat Kenji's Digital Archaeology
- Who is Ridat Kenji? A former teacher from Xinjiang, now a software engineer in Japan, Kenji was moved to action after witnessing friends disappear and Uyghur websites vanish ([05:07]).
- Motivation for Archiving:
“I was crushed. Under the pretext of regulating all websites, some website owners were arrested.” – Ridat Kenji ([05:28])
“If I had sufficient financial resources, I would dedicate my entire time to restoring these websites.” – Ridat Kenji ([07:39]) - Process and Platform: Kenji uses the Internet Archive (archive.org) as a “time machine for the web,” curating and restoring remnants of Uyghur websites, some of which can’t even be found through Google ([00:50], [07:46]).
4. Technical Challenges of Restoration
- Scale of Loss:
“Currently, there are three to five thousand websites on archive.org. I'm compiling a list of these websites and documenting how much content from each site has been archived.” – Ridat Kenji ([01:03]) - Difficulties: Many sites—such as Bagdash, the “Facebook for Uyghurs”—are only partially recoverable. Music, audio, and images are particularly hard to restore; videos and other media are often permanently lost.
“I've retrieved anything I can from the Internet Archive, but whatever wasn't saved, it's not possible for me to bring it back.” – Ridat Kenji ([09:27])
5. Creative Digital Resistance
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Coded Messaging: Uyghurs circumvent censorship with creative tactics: hidden meanings in songs; symbolic gestures in photos to indicate numbers of disappeared family members; coded language (e.g., “school” for re-education camp, “factory job” for forced labor) ([11:08]–[12:49]).
“You’re not allowed to say camps, you say school, you say somebody went to school. And it's not really going to school, they went to camps… Or it's like, oh, somebody got a new job and they're going to love this factory job. And that's like forced labor.” – Johar Ilham ([12:22]) -
Youth Activism Adapting to Censorship:
Uyghur activists use viral TikTok trends to draw attention to abuses, even as their videos are taken down:
“We are Uyghurs, of course we don't have basic human rights. We are Uyghurs, of course China is selling our organs.” ([12:49])
6. The Continuing Threat and Hope
- On Danger:
“I haven’t felt any danger doing this. I'm going to keep going. Is it possible that Chinese authorities are monitoring what I've been doing? Sure. But I'm more worried about what I might not be able to do. That there will be thousands of Uyghur websites on the Internet archive that I won't be able to bring back and restore.” – Ridat Kenji ([13:47]) - Achievements: So far, Kenji has helped restore more than 300 Uyghur websites, reviving lost essays, music, and fragments of culture ([14:14]).
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
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On the fragility of digital memory:
“Pages fade, links rot, and cultures can be erased pixel by pixel, unless someone rushes in to save it.” – Dina Temple-Raston ([01:22]) -
On creative survival:
“Uyghur people have been trying to find very unique and creative ways to get messages out. For example, they would sing a song that has like, hidden meaning that only Uyghur people will understand.” – Johar Ilham ([11:08]) -
On the odds of preservation:
“Each one a small defiance, each one a digital heartbeat where there was once silence.” – Sean Powers ([14:14])
Timestamps for Important Segments
- 00:02 – 01:22: Introduction; Importance of digital archiving
- 02:58 – 03:47: 2009 protests and Internet blackout context
- 03:47 – 05:07: Johar Ilham on disappearances, loss of Uyghur Online
- 05:28 – 07:39: Ridat Kenji’s motivation and surveillance experiences
- 07:46 – 09:27: Archiving process and technical limitations
- 11:08 – 12:49: Uyghur coded resistance and creative communication
- 13:47 – 14:14: On personal risk and the urgency of preservation
- 14:14: Milestone: Restoration of 300+ websites
Conclusion
This episode of Click Here poignantly documents both the deliberate destruction of Uyghur digital heritage and the quiet, heroic struggle to reclaim and preserve it. Through firsthand accounts and narrative storytelling, the episode underscores the resilience of Uyghur culture in the face of state censorship—and the vital role individuals like Ridat Kenji play in safeguarding memory and identity online.