Day: March 6, 2023

In Brief

The Philippine coast guard issued a statement on Feb. 13 accusing China of firing military lasers at one of their ships near Ayungin Shoal (known as Ren’ai Reef in China and Second Thomas Shoal in the U.S.), causing temporary blindness to the crew. Both China and the Philippines claim the shoal as their own territory and accuse each other of violating the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). 

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) found that China’s misleading claims of sovereignty are purely political. A 2016 case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) defined the shoal as a “low-tide elevation,” a terrain feature which under UNCLOS cannot be claimed by any sovereign jurisdiction. 

In Depth 

Who attacked whom?  

On Feb. 6, a Chinese Coast Guard ship about 10 nautical miles from Ayungin fired two green lasers at a PCG ship replenishing a nearby Sierra Madre landing craft. The lasers temporarily blinded several Philippine crew members, with the Chinese ship approaching within 150 yards of the Philippine ship’s starboard at one point. 

The Philippine government believes that the Chinese Coast Guard blatantly ignored and violated the sovereignty of the Philippines by attempting to obstruct the transport of supplies. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin responded by stating that Philippine ships had trespassed in the waters of Ayungin Shoal – which China claims sovereignty over as part of larger territorial claims to the Spratly Islands – and that the Chinese ship defended Chinese sovereignty in accordance with domestic law and UNCLOS. 

The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs issued a press release on Feb. 14, condemning China’s encroachment on Philippine economic waters and calling on China to comply with UNCLOS and the ruling of the 2016 ICJ South China Sea arbitration. 

Did the South China Sea case settle the dispute over Ayungin Shoal? 

Due to the South China Sea’s rich oil reserves and important shipping routes between the Pacific and Indian oceans, competing sovereign claims over certain maritime features in the region have repeatedly blown up into international disputes. 

In the 2013 South China Sea arbitration case held by the ICJ, the Philippines requested clarification on whether certain maritime features claimed separately by China and the Philippines – including Ayungin Shoal -– were islands, rocks or low tide elevations. Each of these terms is defined as a different type of maritime feature by UNCLOS, and each grants different territorial rights to the controlling sovereign state. These territories are broadly divided into territorial waters which are fully under the controlling state’s jurisdiction, exclusive economic zones (EEZ) where the controlling state enjoys special rights on resource extraction in the water. 

The ICJ finally ruled that the Ayungin Shoal – along with three other contentious maritime features – is a low tide elevation, which under UNCLOS does not confer either territorial seas or an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to the controlling country. 

The ICJ further ruled that the shoal is part of the Philippines’ EEZ, declaring that China’s obstruction of Filipino fishermen and oil extraction, construction of artificial islands and interception of Philippine ships all violate the Philippines’ sovereign rights. UNCLOS only permits ships to pass freely through another country’s EEZ, not to conduct law enforcement operations within it, noted Song Cheng’en, an Oxford University doctoral candidate and scholar of international law. 

Must China obey the South China Sea ruling? 

While both countries are signatories to the UNCLOS, China refused to participate in the South China Sea arbitration proposed in 2013 and has repeatedly asserted that the ruling in the Philippines favor is invalid and non-binding.  

The Chinese government has claimed sovereignty over most of the Spratly islands since 1953, publishing various documents since then which list the islands within its territory (1, 2) and resolutely denying the legitimacy of the ICJ ruling on the South China Sea, which Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian called, “a complete political, farce concocted by the United States.” 

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price called on China to comply with the ICJ ruling at a press conference on Feb. 14, noting that the U.S. stands behind the Philippines and affirms that the ICJ decision ought to be legally binding on both parties.  

Conclusion 

Chinese claims of sovereignty over the Ayungin Shoal and subsequent accusations that Philippine Coast Guard ships were trespassing the Shoal’s outlying waters are misleading. 

AFCL found that neither the Ayungin Shoal nor the surrounding 12 nautical miles of territorial waters can be claimed as sovereign territory by either China or the Philippines, and that the shoal still falls within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. 

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) is a new branch of Radio Free Asia, established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. Our journalists publish both daily and special reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of public issues. 

When U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was scheduled to visit Beijing last month, many observers were looking for any sign of a thaw or de-escalation of the most fraught tensions in decades between the two countries. 

But it was not only politicians and businesses with lots at stake who were looking out for signs of reduced tensions. U.S. families with loved ones locked up in Chinese jails were following developments in the diplomatic ice age with a mixture of anxiety and hope.

Families I have mentored and assisted in supporting their imprisoned members in China–through lobbying, hand holding and practical tips, all with the ultimate aim of securing their release–saw their new hopes shattered. They had been lobbying Blinken to raise their cases with China in the hope that the Chinese authorities might show a little mercy and allow early releases, prisoner swaps, or other gestures of goodwill for prisoners the U.S. government considers wrongly detained.

The chances of that were shattered on Feb. 3 when Blinken canceled his trip in protest over China’s spy balloon, which the U.S. Air Force later shot down, accusing China of illegal surveillance and violation of American sovereign territory.

When Blinken met Chinese foreign policy supremo Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 18, hopes were raised that they might patch things up. 

But the encounter rapidly descended into mutual recriminations that made matters even worse. At no time since China began opening up at the end of the 1970s have relations been worse than now.

This has a lot to do with who is in charge in Beijing. China’s de facto dictator Xi Jinping has spent his 11 years in office waging unfriendly campaigns against U.S. dominance over the rules based world order, not only through influence and interference campaigns, but also by building up a large stock of foreign prisoners in his jails, for common crimes that are often unsubstantiated in court.

This inventory includes around 300 Americans stuck in squalid Chinese jails in numerous cities, and others under exit bans unable to leave the country. None of the penalties ever seem proportionate to the alleged offenses, to the point where sentencing appears outright reckless. 

Murky charges

This is also true for all of the several thousand foreigners in China’s jails. Many Singaporeans are holed up on murky charges in Xi’s gulag, such as the lawyer Edwin Tay, who was jailed for life on false fraud charges, and football coach Kunju Jamaludeen, who was sentenced to death, commuted to a life term, and now has life-threatening illnesses in a jail in Guangdong Province.

In fact, not a single prisoner in China has undergone a truly fair and transparent trial with a proper legal defense, because all policing, legal, judicial and penal mechanisms in China are controlled by the Communist Party with no separation of powers, no independent courts and no impartial judges. As a result, criminal prosecutions are driven by the revenge or enmity of party members or their friends, not by forensic detective work and evidence, not by an even-handed and objective justice.

Things began to get much worse for prisoners during the COVID pandemic. For three years China halted all in-person visits to prisoners, making it much harder for U.S. consular officers to deliver support to their imprisoned citizens. 

These visits are vital for discussions of their health and welfare, delivery of letters from family, books and other reading material. Comfort parcels posted from abroad ceased to be handed over to the prisoners. Books and magazines that I mailed to prisoners were not given to them.

Families were throwing up their arms in despair over having much less information and insight into how their loved-one was faring in XI’s cells.

A number of American prisoners have waived some privacy considerations and allowed their names and cases to be publicized, thinking it better that their fellow citizens be made aware of their plight and that public pressure may one day help them get released.

The school teacher David McMahon from Alabama, businessmen Mark Swidan from Texas, Nelson Wells Jr from Louisiana, Kai Li from New York, and pastor David Lin, detained since 2006 and in poor health, have all permitted the release of their information. 

No sign of softer Xi

When you study such cases with the eyes of an investigator, as I have done, they simply don’t stand up and would not survive scrutiny in an American court. Swidan and Wells were hit with death and life sentences, respectively, while Li was given ten years on spurious espionage charges, and. McMahon is serving 13 years on false charges of child molestation. 

“The spy balloon incident, the indefinite postponement of Blinken’s trip, and the fallout from that certainly make it more challenging to have productive conversations between the U.S. and China on issues like my dad’s wrongful detention. But that cannot be an excuse by our government not to find a way to immediately make progress,” Kai Li’s son, Harrison Li, told me.

“When I heard Blinken was going to China, I said to myself finally after eight plus years America and China are improving relations. Our son Little Nelson has a chance now. Then of course it fell through. Never get your hopes up. It is hard to trust, when you are constantly being let down or forsaken,” said the prisoner’s father, Nelson Wells Sr..

In the case of.Swidan, who has been held in a Guangdong jail for ten years without it being clear whether a death sentence has been commuted, the only political leaders visibly trying to save him are his senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn. They recently introduced a resolution in the Senate urging the Blinken and the federal government to “deepen and prioritize” efforts to secure his release. At the federal level, though there is little sign of effort.

“‘Wrongfully detained’ and ‘hostage’ are not just words. There is real suffering behind them and people must know no matter how hard it is to hear,” said his mother Katherine, who has been lobbying for her son’s release for a decade and encountering deaf ears.

I know of many other cases where privacy has not been waived, so they cannot be named. One, a 50-year-old American woman with suspected uterine cancer, has spent nine years in a prison in Guangdong province. 

A young U.S. man has just been imprisoned in a complete stitch-up in Shanghai where he took a rickshaw taxi home after an evening out with friends, and was somehow drugged and delivered to a brothel where he awoke on the floor the next day covered in bruises and was charged with beating staff and police officers. 

U.S. engagement with China is essential to ratchet down the tensions and facilitate official discussions on many such imprisonment cases.

But can we imagine Xi adopting a softer tone towards the United States and other countries right now? There is no sign of that. All we can see currently is that he is busy backing Russia over the war in Ukraine, while on his home front he is focused on new hardline reforms that will boost his dictatorial powers even further at an annual meeting of the rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, now playing out in Beijing.

Real efforts can pay off

In recent times the biggest name in hostage diplomacy in the public eye is the American basketballer Brittney Griner, a hostage of Vladimir Putin in Moscow until Dec. 8,  2022. Washington made gargantuan efforts to get her out, and succeeded, which shows that real efforts sometimes pay off, just as they did for the U.S. earlier in China back in 2017 with the release of Sandy Phan-Gillis after two years in detention for alleged spying. 

Washington also procured the release last year of Trevor Reed from Putin’s jails.

I hope Brittney will live up to her recent pledge to use her celebrity status to help other Americans in similar ordeals overseas, especially those held in China. Blinken is now said to be renewing efforts to obtain the release of another prominent U.S. prisoner in Russia, Paul Whelan. 

Bilateral diplomatic tensions produce domestic casualties, but conflict does not rule out releases, as the case of Russia shows.

“Our administration was able to negotiate the release of both Trevor Reed and Brittney Griner from Russia in the past year despite the Ukraine war. So it is possible. There just needs to be a political will,” said Harrison Li.

The U.S. does not have a bilateral prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) with China allowing for the transfer of convicts to serve out their terms in facilities back home. But there is a Chinese law available to achieve just that.

In 2018 China enacted a law on international cooperation in judicial matters which contains a section allowing for case-by-case home transfers of foreign prisoners held in China on compassionate, medical and humanitarian grounds. 

The foreign government concerned must initiate the process by raising a case with the international cooperation department of the Chinese Ministry of Justice.

I am unaware if the U.S .has ever bothered to invoke this Chinese law. But it is time that Washington did so. 

Unfortunately, they are not on talking terms. So hundreds of Americans face prolonged isolation and suffering in the Communist Party’s dungeons.

Peter Humphrey is a sinologist and journalist with 48 years of involvement with China. The former Reuters correspondent and fraud investigator is an external research affiliate of Harvard University Fairbank Centre for Chinese Studies. He serves as a mentor to families with members imprisoned in China. He was a prisoner of the Chinese state for two years in 2013-2015 after being arrested on false charges of illegal information gathering.

Nearly four out of every five townships in Myanmar has been impacted by conflict in the two years since the military coup, according to the United Nations, prompting calls by civil society for “immediate action” to end the junta’s crimes against its own citizens.

A new report published on Friday found that 255 of Myanmar’s 330 townships, or nearly 80%, had been impacted by armed clashes between the military and anti-junta forces between Jan. 31, 2023, and the Feb. 1, 2021, takeover as the regime’s generals have “embarked on a scorched earth policy in an attempt to stamp out opposition,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement accompanying the findings.

“Tragically, regional and global efforts for peace and restraint have largely fallen on deaf ears,” Türk said.

“The military, emboldened by continuous and absolute impunity, has consistently shown disregard for international obligations and principles,” he said. “Urgent, concrete action is needed to end this festering catastrophe.”

The report documents a long list of human rights violations from Feb. 1, 2022, to Jan. 31, 2023, alone amid what it said was a “sharp rise in violence” over the past year – particularly in the country’s northwestern and southeastern regions.

It cited credible sources as having confirmed the military’s killing of at least 2,940 civilians and arrest of 17,572 others since the coup. The Assistance Association of Political Prisoners (Burma), an NGO based in Thailand, puts the numbers higher, with at least 3,110 killed and 20,167 arrested.

Central to the military’s impact on Myanmar’s civilian population is its so-called “Four-cuts approach” against the armed resistance, the report found. This included indiscriminate airstrikes and shelling, razing of villages, and denial of humanitarian access as part of a bid to “cut off” anti-junta forces from access to food, finances, intelligence and recruits.

The military launched 301 airstrikes in 2022, compared to 125 a year earlier, fired heavy artillery shells 756 times, compared to 376 times in 2021, and burned civilian villages 1,355 times – a staggering five-fold increase from its 282 arson attacks the prior year.

The report singled out the systematic and widespread burning of villages and dwellings as one of the military’s most frequently used tactics, noting that nearly 39,000 houses across the country have been burnt or destroyed by junta troops since February 2022 alone – a more than 1,000-fold increase from a year earlier.

Of the country’s regions, Sagaing was the most affected, with more than 25,500 homes destroyed by military arson, the U.N. said. The military razed nearly the entire village of Ah Shey See in Sagaing’s Kale township, burning 621 structures to the ground, the report found, based on an analysis of satellite imagery.

Civilians in the crosshairs

The military’s indiscriminate airstrikes do more harm to the civilian population than its enemies, the commander of an anti-junta People’s Defense Force paramilitary group in Chin state’s Kanpetlet township told RFA Burmese, speaking on condition of anonymity out of security concerns.

“The military airstrikes target our bases but they often misfire and hit civilian populations, causing the people to suffer,” he said.

A resident of Kawkareik township in southeastern Myanmar’s Kayin state told RFA that not even civilians who flee attacks on their villages are safe from the military.

“People fleeing to the jungle have no shelter and have to live with what little they can carry, under [makeshift] roofs made of leaves,” said the resident. “The military troops still target and shoot at them, as if [the shelters are] an enemy base.”

The U.N. report also documented at least 24 mass killings by junta troops of five people or more in 2022 alone.

The reported increase in the targeting of civilians comes despite numerous claims by junta Deputy Information Minister Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun during interviews with RFA that the military does not target noncombatants or commit arson attacks.

Meanwhile, Myanmar’s economy has foundered as the result of military mismanagement, doubling the country’s poverty rates from March 2020.

The U.N. Human Rights Office said in its report that nearly half of the population now lives in poverty, while rural populations risk starvation amid military restrictions in conflict zones. Some 17.6 million people are being denied access to crucial humanitarian aid, it said.

Commissioner Türk accused the military of creating a “perpetual human rights crisis” in Myanmar since the coup.

“Across Myanmar, people are continuously exposed to violations and crimes, including killings, enforced disappearances, displacement, torture, arbitrary arrests, and sexual violence,” he said.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that the military and its affiliated militias continue to be responsible for most violations, some of which may constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

The U.N. report called for an immediate halt to the violence in Myanmar, the release of those arbitrarily detained, accountability, and unhindered humanitarian access.

Call for immediate action

Speaking to RFA, Nay Phone Latt, the spokesperson for the office of shadow National Unity Government Prime Minister Duwa Lashi La, welcomed the U.N. report, but called for immediate and concrete action to stop the junta.

“This is a situation where tens of people are killed by the junta every day, and their homes and property are being destroyed on a daily basis, as well,” he said.

“Time is of the essence. The longer action is delayed, the more innocent civilians will suffer. That’s why we need to determine the root causes, choose the right methods to deal with them, and implement them quickly.”

Kyaw Win, director of the Burma Human Rights Network told RFA that the military’s human rights violations do more than “constitute” crimes against humanity, calling them even worse than what is documented in the U.N. report.

“What the Myanmar military is carrying out are crimes against humanity … because it has systematically committed such crimes everywhere using the same pattern and methods,” he said.

Other sources said they were unsurprised by the U.N.’s findings, noting that the military has become increasingly brutal over the two years since the coup.

“If such atrocities continue to happen every month, the people will be in serious trouble,” said a member of the PDF in Sagaing’s Wetlet township, who also declined to be named. “The international community must join together to overthrow the military regime as soon as possible.”

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

Chinese authorities in Tibet arrested a woman for contacting Tibetans outside the western autonomous region amid an increase in surveillance and security searches before a politically sensitive anniversary, a Tibetan with knowledge of the situation said. 

Police arrested Yangtso, 23, from the town of Shigatse on March 2, after checking her cell phone and seeing that she contacted and sent photos to people outside the Tibet Autonomous Region.  

She is being detained at the local police station of Namling county, said a Tibetan living in exile, who declined to be identified so as to speak freely about the matter.

“Yangtso’s family members have no contact with her at the moment,” the source said. 

China rules Tibet with an iron grip, closely monitoring and restricting Tibetans’ political activities and expressions of cultural and religious identity.

The crackdown is intensifying in the run-up to March 10, known as Tibetan Uprising Day, which commemorates the uprising of 1959 during which tens of thousands of Tibetans took to the streets of the regional capital Lhasa in protest against China’s invasion and occupation of their homeland a decade earlier. 

The failure of the armed rebellion resulted in a violent clampdown on Tibetan independence movements, and the flight of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and many Tibetans into exile in Dharamsala, India.

“As the March 10 anniversary is approaching, there is high-alert scrutiny and random interrogations in place all over Lhasa and Shigatse,” said the Tibetan who lives in exile. “Everyone must carry their identity cards, and police are checking cell phones.”

Yangtso worked in a restaurant called “Gang-ri” in Shigatse city, according to an article in the Tibet Times, a Tibetan-language newspaper published in Dharamsala, residence of the Dalai  Lama and the seat of the Tibetan government in exile.

Tibetans accuse Chinese authorities of violating their human rights and trying to eradicate their religious, linguistic and cultural identity.

Chinese authorities have cracked down on Tibetans during Losar, the Tibetan Buddhist New Year celebrated Feb. 20-26 this year, with cellphone checks and raids in Lhasa, Shigatse and Chamdo, sources told RFA in an earlier report. 

Before the holiday, authorities warned against holding events that could endanger national security and said they would take immediate action against them.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Chinese state security police recently targeted a U.S.-based Chinese national after she signed a petition critical of Communist Party leader Xi Jinping on Change.org, raising questions over how they managed to get hold of her personal details, Radio Free Asia has learned.

A U.S.-based Chinese woman who gave only the nickname Ning Ning said she had recently received a late-night phone call from her father back in China, asking her to confirm whether a signature on a Change.org petition was hers.

“The state security police had come visiting, and my dad was repeating the [text on the petition] website back to me, asking me if it was me who signed,” Ning Ning said.

“They knew it was me because I had to fill out some personal details [for the petition],” she said.

Ning Ning’s revelations come as governments around the world scramble to assess the degree to which Beijing has managed to infiltrate and exert influence on foreign soil, particularly through the use of overseas police “service stations,” which have been shut down in a number of locations worldwide in recent months.

Video call from state security

State security police also wanted Ning Ning to provide all of the registration details she gave to Change.org, and to accept a video call from them, so they could see her logging onto the website, she said.

The state security police appeared to know the email address she had used to sign the petition already, as well as other email addresses she had previously used there, Ning Ning said.

“They knew my account details and asked me to share my screen with them, and they also searched for my accounts on other social media,” she said. “They then asked me if the accounts were mine or not, and what sort of things I had posted there.”

Ning said she was being targeted because the petition she signed contained wording critical of ruling Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, which elevated the matter to “a major national security incident,” according to the state security police she spoke to.

Repeated calls to the local police department in the district where Ning Ning’s family lives rang unanswered during office hours on March 3.

Change.org currently hosts more than 9,000 petitions containing the keyword “China” in English, the majority of which have to do with animal protection issues, according to a brief search of the site.

It is entirely possible to withhold a person’s real name on the site, and only have a nickname displayed publicly, raising questions about how Chinese state security police were able to access private information on users of Change.org.

“It’s pretty scary, as if the state security police can see in real time who is logging onto that website with what email address,” Ning Ning said. “How can they know about these email addresses?”

A spokesperson for Change.org, which is blocked by China’s Great Firewall of internet censorship, said the company’s cybersecurity team had recently reviewed the data privacy and information security agreements relating to people who sign international petitions and found no signs of leaks or system vulnerabilities.

Former Sina Weibo censor Liu Lipeng said China-based hackers could have targeted Change.org, or police could have somehow gotten their hands on leaked data from the site, however.

“The fact that the Chinese authorities were able to go straight to her family and ask them to get her to take something down tells us clearly that they saw her email address,” Liu said. “The police have already made it totally clear that this was a leak from Change.org.”

“But how did they then link her email to her real name?” he said. “That is still an open question.”

“But the fact that they knew the email address shows that this is definitely something leaked from that website.”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Matt Reed.

The children wore traditional Uyghur clothing – etles silk dresses for the girls, white shirts with embroidered collars for the boys, doppa skullcaps for both – as they walked on a T-shaped stage. Parents and other spectators sat on chairs on either side, watching eagerly. 

Photographers took pictures of a typical Uyghur display on the walls of the auditorium: a carpet depicting a Uyghur muqam musical performance, and a selection of traditional clothing and musical instruments.

The Uyghur American Association put on a “Uyghur Fashion Show” on Feb. 24 in Fairfax, Virginia, to celebrate their culture and highlight a trend that has gone unmentioned on the global runway: the use of Uyghur forced labor, which is deeply embedded in clothing supply chains. 

“We organized this event to send a message to China: You can’t destroy our culture and you can’t destroy the hope and belief of our children in the future,” said Elfidar Iltebir, the association’s president. She hoped the event would both promote Uyghur culture and draw attention to clothing brands profiting from Uyghur forced labor. 

The Uyghur region produces roughly 80% of China’s cotton – 20% of the global supply – along with an increasing amount of finished textiles and clothing. 

Findings by the American government, NGOs, and journalists suggest that both raw material and finished consumer products have been made by Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, under coercive conditions, as part of the Chinese government’s campaign of subjugation and control. 

The U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which took effect in 2022, requires proof that no forced labor was involved in order to import goods made wholly or partially in Xinjiang. Genetic testing can determine whether the cotton in a finished product was grown in Xinjiang. 

But many major brands do not disclose their sourcing. And researchers fear that among the brands actively complying with the law, some continue to do business in Xinjiang by bifurcating their supply chains and sending tainted products to the rest of the world.

“How can we stop the Chinese government’s exploitation of Uyghur forced labor? It’s a simple math problem,” said show attendee Jewher Ilham, Forced Labor Project Coordinator at the Workers’ Rights Consortium, a monitoring group. 

Making it unprofitable for brands to use forced labor requires both government and individual action, she said. “We need to pass laws globally like the U.S.’s Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. And, wherever possible, we need to stop buying from brands connected to Uyghur forced labor.”

‘I had to hold back my tears’

The Uyghur Fashion Show featured children’s clothing. The models were mainly Uyghur children, between the ages of 5 and 20 who were born and raised in the United States. 

They wore family heirlooms, brought by their parents from the Uyghur region years ago: all colors and styles of etles dresses, embroidered doppa, fur tumaq caps. Some of the outfits were designed and sewn by Tursunay Ziyawudun, one of a handful of Uyghurs to have survived a Chinese internment camp and escaped abroad. Other outfits were brought from Uyghur clothing boutiques in Turkey and Uzbekistan.

In the first part of the show, the models walked the runway accompanied by Uyghur children’s music. They wore all styles of traditional Uyghur clothing, and held Uyghur musical instruments. 

Then, there was a brief dramatic performance. In the skit, Chinese police stripped the doppa and etles coat from a Uyghur girl reading a book, and forcibly took her to a clothing factory. The sewing table in the factory was draped in bags from international brands. 

“I had to hold back my tears, because this is reality – this kind of situation happens every day in the homeland,” said Elfidar Iltebir, the Uyghur American Association’s president, who played the role of the Uyghur girl.

‘Proud to be Uyghur’

After the performance, the children reappeared, carrying placards with slogans like “stop Uyghur forced labor,” and “clothing made with Uyghur forced labor isn’t fashionable”. The auditorium fell into silence.

One of the models participating in the show was Zilale, a young Uyghur-American. On stage, she wore a long etles dress designed by Tursunay Ziyawudun and held a dutar lute. In fluent Uyghur, she said that her mother had raised her with a Uyghur spirit. She expressed concern that mainstream Chinese culture was sanitizing and adopting Uyghur cultural symbols, even as the Chinese government punished Uyghurs for displaying them. 

“We came here to say, no, this is Uyghur clothing, this is Uyghur culture,” she said. “I am so proud to be Uyghur.”

Translated by Nadir. Edited by Josh Lipes and Malcolm Foster.