Zumratay Arkin (4:40)
Sure. Salaam alaikum. It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you for welcoming me. Yeah, I mean, the situation right now, I think we can just call it as. As it is a genocide. And the way it cited, of course, it goes back to colonialism. Actually, in 1949, in October 1949, we were. Uyghur people were colonized. So Uyghur people refer to their homeland as East Turkestan, which is the historical name, but after the colonization, the Chinese government renamed it as the Uyghur Autonomous Xinjiang. Uyghur Autonomous Region. Xinjiang means a new frontier. So that also in the name itself, it actually indicates that it is colonialism. So since the colonialism, there were multiple policies and directives that were introduced that slowly led to where we are now why I say this is because after the colonialism took place, they were forced migration of Han Chinese people. So in the beginning it was mostly administrative people and their families migrating to East Turkestan. But then later on that expanded and then Han Chinese people became prominent in the region itself. And then I guess there were several key periods where the policies towards Uyghurs really intensified in terms of repression and discrimination. In 1993 there was mass protests that cited in Ruzha because the government, the Chinese government banned the practice of Mashrab. Meshreb is a gathering of Uyghurs, mostly men, but they're also female. Sometimes that is a celebration of Uyghur culture and also religion. And it's a deep, you know, it's, it's a very important part of our identity and culture. And when the government banned it, there was mass protests happening and then there was a crackdown. But I would say the other key moment was post 9 11, because before 911 Uyghurs were mostly characterized or labeled as separatists. But then 911 happened, the international War on Terror happened. The Chinese government co opted that and started accusing Uyghurs as terrorists because Uyghurs are mostly Muslims. So I guess after 911 there were a series of measures introduced to really restrict, you know, a lot of freedoms. And then later on in July 2009, there was the Urumqi massacre that happened, which was a protest, a democratic protest that happened in the city, in the capital city of Urumqi actually. I was present that summer and I arrived just a few, two days after the protest started. And it lasted for about a week where thousands of people took the streets to demand more rights for Uyghurs. And that just led to a heavy crackdown on Uyghur protesters. And there were of course inter ethnic clashes as well. And so after that the Chinese government introduced series of legislation and directives, especially after the arrival of Xi Jinping to power, where he recognized Uyghurs as a, as a problem, especially because of our religious identity and also because of course where we identify as Muslims, but also because we identify as Turkic people. And then the counterterrorism laws, the regulation on the extremifications were adopted in the following years together paired with a mass surveillance network that was implemented by the then governor Chen Chong Guo, who was previously appointed in Tibet and who had similarly led this campaign of mass surveillance. And so paired with that system of sophisticated surveillance, 2017 was kind of the beginning of the heavy crackdown on Uyghurs by heavy crackdown. What I mean is the arbitrary detention of over three millions of Uyghurs and Turkic people in internment camps, and some people refer them as concentration camps. So it's basically these people, Uyghurs and Turkic people, have found themselves all of a sudden guilty of a fabricated charge, most often related to terrorism, which the government just, you know, overnight alleged that these people committed specific crimes under the counterterrorism legislation that is in place, which was then condemned by UN experts. So all of a sudden we have these news emerging from the region that, you know, millions of people have disappeared into these camps. And then that's when international media started reporting about it. And later on, they were leaked documents that also confirmed leaked documents from the Chinese government that confirmed that people were detained for all sorts of reasons, but also for normal religious behaviors such as praying five times a day, owning a Quran, owning religious textbooks, teaching Islam, naming your child with Islamic names. That was all forbidden. And those were some of the reasons why people were detained for. And also for women who were also detained for having too many children or for wearing a hijab. And then of course, there were also scholars, intellectuals, religious figures that were also targeted for different reasons. And I mean, since then, there were other policies that were introduced. For example, the most drastic policy is the forced sterilization policy, which is an attempt to really drop the birth rates in East Turkestan. And as a result of that, between 2017, 2019, there was a drastic drop of Uyghur birth rates. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has abandoned its one child policy in overall China to counter the aging population. But then in our region in East Turkestan, women were forcibly sterilized under this policy. So women of childbearing age. And then beyond that, of course, there was an attempt to also separate families, not only those families who are living in the diaspora like us, we have lost contact with our relatives in 2017. And since today, since then, until today, we have had no contact with our relatives. So we don't know, for the most of us, we don't know where our relatives are, their whereabouts, if they're alive or not, but also an attempt to forcibly separate families within East Turkestan. So by, for example, sending Uyghur children to state run orphanages or boarding schools, which is similar in Tibet. So approximately a million Uyghur children have been sent to these boarding schools where they're basically assimilated into Han Chinese identity. So they cannot speak their mother tongue, they cannot practice their religion or celebrate their culture, they're separated from their parents. And then you have all of these forced labor schemes, which is also an attempt to separate families because people are coerced into working in factories for different. In different industries, for different companies, including foreign companies, and they're sent to Chinese provinces, so thousands of kilometers away away from their families, and they're restricted in their freedom of movement, so they cannot visit their families when they want. So with all of that came this kind of isolation of Uyghurs, and also this attempt to erase our ethnic, cultural, religious identity by, of course, forbidding religious, you know, behavior, by forbidding practice, cultural practices, by destroying our cultural heritage and religious sites. For example, 16,000 mosques have been destroyed since. Since, you know, the time. And our. Our shrines are, you know, places of cultural and religious significance have all been targeted and destroyed. So, and of course, with the surveillance, people do not dare to live as they want to, even in the privacy of their homes, because they are also surveilled within their homes with, you know, officials, Chinese officials, that are visiting them on a regular basis. So altogether, it gives you a pretty good picture of how life is in East Turkestan. And especially in the last few years, it has really escalated into a genocide. And there's this collective fear outside and inside. And this is exactly what the Chinese government wants.
