Grassroots Activism: Why it Matters
Rushan Abbas
Rushan Abbas started her activism work while she was a student, participating in the pro-democracy demonstrations at Xinjiang University in 1985 and 1988. Since her arrival in the United States in 1989, Ms. Abbas has been an ardent campaigner for the human rights of the Uyghur people and has worked closely with members of Congress since the 1990s. Ms. Abbas was a co-founder of the California-based Uyghur Overseas Student and Scholars Association in 1993, the first such Uyghur association in the United States, and served as that organization’s first Vice-President. The charter co-drafted by Ms. Abbas later served as the blueprint and played an important role in the establishment of the Uyghur American Association (UAA) in 1998. Ms. Abbas was subsequently elected Vice President of UAA for two terms. When Radio Free Asia launched Uyghur service in 1998, Ms. Abbas was the first Uyghur reporter broadcasting daily to the Uyghur region.
In 2017, Rushan Abbas founded Campaign for Uyghurs to advocate and promote human rights and democratic freedoms for Uyghurs, and mobilize the international community to act to stop the human rights atrocity in East Turkistan. Under her organization, Ms. Abbas introduced and led the “One Voice One Step” movement and successfully organized a demonstration on March 15th, 2018, in 14 countries and 18 cities on the same day to protest China’s detention of millions of Uyghurs in concentration camps.
Halmurat Harri
Murat Harri Uyghur, an ethnic Uyghur based in Finland has had both of his parents detained. His mother Guihuahan Tiemuer and father Saitiniyazi Wufuer were held in an internment camp in Turpan. They are only two of the millions of Uyghurs and Kazakhs suffering under in China’s internment camps in East Turkestan. Murat Harri Uyghur started a campaign for his parent’s release and for the release of millions of other innocent detainees of internment camps. He decided to use social media to his advantage. In the spring of 2018, he posted a public video on Facebook, in which he shaved off his hair, in order to demonstrate against the detention of his parents and demanded their immediate release. The video went viral among the Uyghur community in exile. Later he uploaded many other videos in which he was encouraging other Uyghurs to stand up against China’s unjust and cruel treatment of their relatives in the Uyghur region (Uyghurs prefer to call their homeland as East Turkestan; however, the official term is Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region).
UyghurAid was generated and developed from the #FreeMyParents campaign. Eventually Murat's parents were released on December 24th in 2018. Murat, however has continued his activism in order to see others released, too.
Samira Imin
Samira Imin graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in May 2018. After finishing her study in Biology and Psychology, she started working at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. As a premed, she had a simple dream of being a health care professional. However, because of her Uyghur identity, her fate has changed - she now has more to carry on her shoulders. She heard out about her father, Iminjan Seydin's arbitrary detention, and 15 years of unlawful imprisonment by the Chinese government after a year of her graduation. Her father, Iminjan Seydin, is a prominent Uyghur historian and a publisher who owns Xinjiang Emin Book Publishing Company. His publishing house has over 300 publications, some of them being Uyghur literature and the Uyghur translation of world-famous books. However, being an Uyghur scholar put Iminjan Seydin in an adverse position.
Along with many other Uyghur scholars and influential, educational, Samira's father became one of the very first victims of the Uyghur Humanitarian Crisis. Growing up attending Han Chinese school, Samira rarely doubted the Chinese government. However, the unfair treatments that her father and the rest of the Uyghurs are facing have shaken Samira's belief in the Chinese government's justice system.
Samira decided to become the voice of her father and the voiceless. Last November, Samira started her advocacy and social media campaign for her father's release. While pursuing her medical career, Samira says she will keep speaking up until her father and many others like her father get their well-deserved justice.