Our interview with Dolkun Isa, President of the World Uyghur Congress, on the Chinese repression against the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang.
"A Uyghur never feels safe, because at any moment and without any reason they can be taken from their own home, or from the street, to be brought to concentration camps. Or they simply disappear." The existence of the Uyghur minority in the Chinese region of Xinjiang is not a normal one, and nobody knows this better than Dolkun Isa. A Uyghur political activist who has been in exile for over twenty years due to persecution by Beijing, he is probably the leading international figure for the cause of the Turkic-speaking Islamic minority.
If the world has begun to talk about mass surveillance, detention camps, forced labour and the other brutal forms of human rights violation to which Uyghurs are subjected in China, it is also thanks to his work and his determination as president of the World Uyghur Congress.
Dolkun Isa has experienced the weight of Chinese repression first-hand, as has his family. Arrests, threats and intimidation have made his life an obstacle course. In 2017 his mother died in deafening silence in one of the detention and re-education camps, and now his brother is imprisoned there too. His father's whereabouts are unknown; all that is known is that he died in 2019. "Freedom is not free — there is a price to pay for it, and my family and I are paying it," is his philosophy.
LifeGate reached him by telephone for an interview.
What is daily life like for a Uyghur person in the Chinese region of Xinjiang?
There is no truly normal life for Uyghurs. While millions of people suffer in Chinese concentration camps, those outside live in fear. You always have to be on guard about what might happen at any moment. Nobody feels safe, because without any reason or explanation you can be taken from your home, from the street, from a shopping centre while you are out shopping, and brought to places like the concentration camps, or perhaps simply made to disappear. This is the life of Uyghurs — there is not even the possibility of freely visiting friends and family. To do so, you have to register for a meeting of 15–20 minutes, and if you stay in their homes for longer, security men arrive and cause problems; you end up being interrogated. The entrances to apartments in Xinjiang are fitted with dedicated state-controlled surveillance cameras; the Chinese security forces know who enters and leaves people's homes. This is one example of how the daily life of Uyghurs unfolds under a permanent threat from the authorities. Nobody feels safe.
How does China's campaign of repression and assimilation work? What is Beijing's objective?
The objective of the Chinese government is very clear: to completely eradicate the Uyghur ethnic group, which is considered a problem for the country. This happens, for example, through indoctrination. Beijing offers the Uyghur minority the possibility of continuing to live, on condition that they embrace Chinese culture. The alternative is death. This kind of assimilationist policy towards the Uyghurs is nothing new; on the contrary, it has been going on since the occupation of 1949 and has never stopped. From 2014 onwards, however, and with the rise to power of Xi Jinping, the Chinese government shifted from a policy of assimilation to one of genocide. The authorities maintain that Uyghurs cannot exist as such, and all Uyghurs without distinction are regarded as an enemy by the authorities.
If nothing is done soon, is there a risk of moving towards the progressive disappearance and extinction of the Uyghur minority?
Uyghur culture and its symbols have already been partly destroyed by the Chinese government — a process that has been going on for several years. The authorities have, for example, destroyed the old city of Kashgar, a very important historic site at the heart of the old Silk Road. In 2011 the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the Chinese government to halt the destruction of the city, but the operation continued, and 75 per cent of the old centre was already gone by the time Xi Jinping came to power. The new president continued his work of cultural destruction in the area, also targeting cemeteries, tombs and other symbols. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi), between 2017 and 2020 around 8,000 mosques, some dating back several centuries, disappeared, destroyed on the orders of the Chinese authorities. Beijing has intervened in Xinjiang over religion, language, but also over more mundane aspects such as how people dress, what they eat, what they drink. Everything in the lives of Uyghurs is determined by the Chinese authorities. If pork or alcohol is offered, a Uyghur cannot refuse, regardless of the fact that the Islamic religion does not permit the consumption of these foods. Refusing them is tantamount to being considered a radical — it is therefore a problem and can open the door to the concentration camps.
Uyghurs have an important history along the old Silk Road and have made a decisive contribution to the world cultural heritage, always fighting to protect their symbols and their identity. Today all of this risks disappearing — which is why the world must raise its voice and demand that China answer for its policy in the region and cease the genocide of the Uyghurs. The international community cannot remain silent; initiatives must be taken, our culture must be saved.
Why has the Uyghur tragedy only begun to be spoken about in recent times?
The concentration camps have existed since 2016 and the situation had already worsened from 2014 with Xi Jinping's rise to power, yet until 2018 the Uyghur issue remained below the radar in the international community. Human rights organisations and the World Uyghur Congress applied pressure on the matter in international forums, and this eventually paid off. In August 2018, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (Cerd) presented a report on China in Geneva, before a number of states including a Chinese delegation, as well as myself. For the first time, the millions of Uyghurs held in Chinese detention centres were discussed. It was a turning point: for the first time the issue was raised and the Chinese government was asked to close the camps; from that moment on, the international media began to cover the Uyghur issue more and more.
Yet the tragedy was nothing new — it had been going on for several years already without anyone at the international level having reacted in any way. With the UN report of 2018, pressure on Beijing increased; until that point Beijing had denied the very existence of these camps, then it adopted the version that they were re-education camps where young people would be trained for their future and given a job. The reality is that inside there are people of all kinds — intellectuals, professors, young people, elderly people. My mother, for example, was in the camps even though she was in her seventies, and she died there in 2017.
Is it possible that in Europe, in our daily lives, we find ourselves using products made by Uyghur prisoners in forced labour camps?
Many European nations continue to do business with China. A significant share of the goods destined for international markets comes from the forced labour camps where Uyghurs are employed, as demonstrated by several international reports conducted by experts and research centres. There is no reason why commercial relations between European countries and China should continue as though nothing were happening — we are talking about a situation of genocide against a people. Canada, the United States and several other states have officially recognised this crime, yet the majority of European nations continues to ignore it and to sign new trade agreements. This is unacceptable. Europeans, and Italians and Germans in particular, lived through and suffered under their Nazi and fascist regimes some 80 years ago; 80 years on, all of this is happening again in another part of the world.
Today, approximately 20 per cent of global cotton and 85 per cent of Chinese cotton comes from forced labour in Xinjiang, the Uyghur region. Europe should not be complicit with China in the genocide of the Uyghurs.
How did you become a leading figure in the Uyghur cause, and what difficulties have you encountered over these years of political activism?
I was a student leader in Xinjiang in the 1980s — from a young age I fought for the rights of the Uyghurs. I had to leave my country and go into exile more than twenty years ago, and throughout that time I have tried to use all my strength and abilities to shine a spotlight on the Uyghur issue at the international level. I have faced a great many problems because of my positions; the Chinese authorities placed my name on Interpol's blacklist as far back as the 1990s, and I have been the victim of several arbitrary arrests, including in Italy.
In 2017 I was invited to the Italian Senate to take part in a conference on human rights, but shortly before it was due to begin more than twenty police officers forcibly removed me and took me to a police station, where they took my fingerprints and mug shots. I was treated like a terrorist. I have had many other similar experiences — for instance in South Korea, where I was imprisoned for four days. They were about to extradite me to China, where I do not know what would have become of me, but the German authorities and the US Department of State intervened. They saved my life and I was able to return to Germany. I have also been detained in Switzerland, and in New York I was stopped as I was about to enter the United Nations building for a meeting.
These experiences are the effect of the long tentacles of China, which extend beyond its borders and influence other states and international institutions as well. As an activist and president of the World Uyghur Congress, I have faced many problems throughout my life. Freedom is not free — there is a price to pay for it, and my family and I are paying it. My mother died in a detention camp in 2017, my father died last year without my having received any news about it, and my brother too ended up in one of the concentration camps. This is the life to which I, other activists, and our families are subjected.
