A Chinese government campaign using Uyghur expatriates to make pro-China videos and comments on social media platforms to mark the July 1 centenary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been met with contempt by activists and netizens from the Uyghur diaspora.
Posts, videos, and photos on WeChat, TikTok, and Instagram featuring ethnic Uyghurs praising the Chinese government’s policies in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have rankled Uyghurs with family members in the region’s vast internment camp system that has brought international accusations of genocide and crimes against humanity.
In a video recently uploaded to TikTok, an ethnic Uyghur cosmetic surgeon named Mardan who lives in South Korea says he encouraged his seven-year-old daughter to take part in a concert organized by the Chinese Embassy celebrating the CCP’s 100th anniversary, where she sang a Chinese patriotic song.
Other videos show Mardan and his family at embassy events, giving interviews to Chinese journalists, and expressing their loyalty to the Chinese state. The videos describe how Mardan is imbuing his two Korea-born daughters with ideas about the “unity of the Chinese nation” and “Chinese identity.”
Mardan says that he has posted videos of the daughters on social media to propagate the idea that Uyghurs live happily in China.
When contacted to discuss his short videos, Mardan abruptly ended the call, saying that he could not speak to RFA.
In another recent video on Douyin, China’s domestic equivalent to TikTok, a Norway-based Uyghur named Akbar praises Chinese-made cars and other products, and says that he always has considered himself a proud “Chinese citizen” despite living outside the country.
Uyghurs on social media swiftly condemned the video, after which Akbar issued a statement on Facebook asking his fellow Uyghurs for forgiveness and claiming that he considers himself an “East Turkistan Uyghur,” using the name for the XUAR preferred by most Uyghurs. Akbar said he was forced to make pro-China statements on Douyin so he could maintain contact with his relatives in the XUAR.
Some members of the Uyghur diaspora expressed understanding for Akbar’s situation, but many others denounced his actions as unacceptable.
“We are a people subjugated, a people experiencing a genocide, and we have ended up in this situation on account of the Sinophilic Uyghurs among us, on account of those people who support the government,” said Zubayra Shamseden, Chinese outreach coordinator of the Uyghur Human Rights Project.
The ‘cowards among us’
A small number of Uyghurs who live in democratic nations publicly express their loyalty to the Chinese state, shun Uyghur-led demonstrations against Chinese policy around the globe, and even report on Uyghurs abroad to Chinese government authorities to help block events and slander activists, Zubayra said.
She cited the examples of Halida, a Uyghur woman working for the Chinese government in Australia, who recently attempted to block Uyghur-led demonstrations, and of a young Uyghur woman in Germany who has spoken out in defense of Chinese policy and slandered the testimonies of camp survivors.
Such actions “make us ashamed that there are people like this among us, that there are such sellouts, traitors, and cowards among us, that there are people who are so selfish as to destroy the future of an entire ethnic group, an entire people, for a smidgen of personal gain,” Zubayra said.
Although such people are useful to the Chinese authorities in their disinformation campaigns, they ultimately live under the threat that they and their families will fall into China’s “black hands,” she added.
Some Uyghurs have spent their entire lives working loyally for the Chinese state, only to find themselves detained and locked up in camps and prisons — what China calls “two-faced Uyghurs,” she noted.
Since January, the U.S. State Department and the parliaments of six other democratic countries have determined that the Chinese government is perpetrating genocide against Uyghurs in the XUAR, citing internment camps that have held some 1.8 million people, some of whom have been tortured or subjected to other abuse. A German parliamentary committee last week declared that serious human rights violations against the Uyghurs are crimes against humanity.
The U.S. and several other countries have imposed sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for various abuses against Uyghurs, as well as on Chinese government agencies and companies suspected of using Uyghur forced labor to make products such as cotton, wigs, tomatoes, and polysilicon for solar panels.
In response, the Chinese government has intensified a multifaceted campaign to counter its critics and dismiss the allegations.
“Whilst Beijing celebrates this month, our communities will be mourning the gradual loss of our fundamental rights over the past century,” said Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, in a statement issued June 28.
“We have nothing to celebrate during an ongoing genocide, so we will continue to speak up against this authoritarian regime,” Isa said. “The CCP is the world’s most fearsome criminal organization supported by the state. It is responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people in the last 100 years. [The] CCP’s crimes must be held accountable by the international justice system.”
Following increased pressure from the international community, the Chinese government has stepped up its Uyghur crisis disinformation campaign in Japan, in part by mobilizing Chinese Embassy and Chinese NGOs in the country, Uyghur residents said.
On April 29, two Japan-based organizations, including the Chinese Professors Association, organized an online briefing during which a young Uyghur man named Pahirdin Parhat, gave a pro-China speech, according to Ahmatjan Letip, secretary general of the Japan Uyghur Association.
In addition to claiming that there were no internment camps in the XUAR, Pahirdin also criticized international human rights organizations for making what he called “baseless” claims against China.
The 25-year-old Uyghur recounted having grown up in China and said that Uyghurs faced no discrimination there. He also stressed that Uyghurs and Han Chinese lived prosperous and harmonious lives together in the XUAR, Ahmatjan said.
Pointing out untruths
Among the different kinds of Chinese propaganda being used abroad are embassy-organized online briefings by Chinese and Uyghur officials from the XUAR’s capital Urumqi, so-called “cadets” and “religious figures” whose minds have been changed in the “reeducation centers,” and ordinary people from all walks of life, Ahmatjan said.
“They claim that everything being said about Uyghurs internationally is false, that it is all propaganda fabricated by the West,” he said.
Pahirdin’s remarks provoked strong condemnation from Uyghurs living in Japan, Ahmatjan said, amid a strengthened Chinese government propaganda campaign in that country.
“Pahirdin discussed the camps in his presentation, [and] he said that the Western media is spreading disinformation that one million Uyghurs have been locked up in concentration camps,” Ahmatjan said.
As in some other countries, Chinese government representatives are attempting to justify the crimes they are committing against Uyghurs by forcing Uyghur students to speak out in favor of the government and its policies, he said.
Ahmetjan stressed that Pahirdin’s hour-long presentation had a negative impact on Japanese society, and that in response his organization distributed a video and published op-eds in major Japanese newspapers pointing out the young Uyghur’s untruths.
Abdulkerim Abdurahman, president of the Japan Uyghur Association, told RFA that association members have begun holding anti-disinformation activities in Japan.
“For this person named Pahirdin to stand on China’s side and refute all of this oppression, to say that Uyghurs are living happily at a time when the people in our homeland are suffering so indescribably, deeply angered Uyghurs in Japan,” he said.
RFA could not locate Pahirdin for comment.
To mark the CCP’s 100th anniversary, the Washington-based Campaign for Uyghurs issue a statement titled “100 Years of CCP Rule: Genocide is Nothing to Celebrate” and appealed for international attention to China’s treatment of the 12 million Uyghurs in eh XUAR.
“As fireworks burst in China, they will ring as an insult to the millions of people suffering under CCP rule. They will illuminate a nation that has eschewed freedom of religion and democracy in favor of authoritarian rule,” the statement said.
“This is a deeply sad day for the world, since we have yet to stop the CCP’s reign of terror. The genocide of the Uyghurs is ongoing still, and each day the Party is becoming bolder,” said Rushan Abbas, executive director of the Washington-based NGO.
“This is our final wake-up call that the CCP must be stopped if we are to preserve a global system of dignity and order that is respected by all,” she said.
Reported by Mihray Abdilim and Erkin Tarim for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Translated by the Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.