Content Warning: This story mentions rape and abuse.
“Free East Turkistan! Free East Turkistan!” chanted students outside Ronald Tutor Campus Center on Thursday. USC’s Muslim Student Union and Delta Phi Epsilon organized a protest to stand in solidarity with the Uyghur Muslims in China and to push USC to acknowledge the situation.
About 30 people showed up wearing blue to the protest. They held handmade posters. One of them read, “USC -> It’s time to call it GENOCIDE”. The march started at 5 p.m. and protestors walked through Trousdale Parkway to the USC Village and back.
“USC has been notably silent on the Uyghur issue, although the institution does speak out when it comes to other human rights violations,” a post on the MSU Facebook page reads.
Ephar Anwar, president of the MSU and an Uyghur by birth, has observed that the university has been vocal against human rights violations but has not released a solidarity statement.
“They haven’t even recognised the Uyghur genocide and I think that’s one of the reasons we’re doing a protest today, so USC can recognize the genocide and stand up for Uyghurs,” she said.
Anwar believes that the student population at USC should raise awareness around the oppression of Uyghurs in China and that students can pressure the university to issue a solidarity statement for the community.
“I am an Uyghur with over 93 relatives missing in occupied East Turkistan, from my father’s and my mother’s side,” Anwar said. “That’s just the reality of Uyghurs. For every Uyghur I know they have at least one or two relatives in the camps or friends in the camps.”
She also emphasizes that it’s offensive for Uyghurs to be recognized as Chinese Muslims or the region to be recognized as Xinjiang.
“Although it’s known on the map as Xinjiang, Occupied East Turkistan is the proper terminology and is most appropriate,” she said.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the Uyghur Muslims in the occupied East Turkistan region have garnered the attention of US policymakers since reports of mass incarceration of Uyghurs in “reeducation” centers were made public. These centers are an attempt by the Chinese government to forcefully assimilate the population into China and Chinese culture and strip them of their identity, culture and religion.
The Journal of Political Risk has reported that they do this by separating children from their families and sending them to Vocational Training Internment Camps where they are “re-educated”. VTICs are often just internment camps in disguise, as discussed in the journal.
CSR claims that of the 12 million Uyghur Muslims in occupied East Turkistan — more than half the total population in the region — the government has detained around 1 million to 1.8 million Uyghur Muslims between 2017 and 2020.
For population control reasons, there are strict policies on having children in the region, with reports of forced sterilization and abortions to control Uyghur population growth in occupied East Turkistan, according to German Anthropologist Adrian Zenz. Additionally, many Uyghur women have experienced or observed evidence of mass rape, sexual abuse and torture.
“I think it’s really important that nations as a whole take a stand against China,” said Emma Cockerel, a member of the US-China Institute at USC. “Some countries have explicitly labeled what’s happening as genocide, but other countries have really resisted in criticizing China.”
Despite the aforementioned continued human rights violations in occupied East Turkistan, China continues to publicly deny allegations.
“I know that the US, in the past, has sanctioned four officials and I think that’s a good step. But I also think maybe we need to ramp up those sanctions,” Cockerel said.
Defne Aslan, DPE’s Communications Coordinator, was among the organizers of the protest. She believes people knew of the Chinese government’s violation of human rights for a few years.
“People were seeing infographics on the internet and even sharing them, yet are completely unaware that the genocide is still happening today,” Aslan said. “This is why I’m so glad that MSU reached out to us to partner on the march so we could urge USC to make a statement and take a stand for the Uyghur Muslims.”
Both DPE and MSU urged USC to stand in solidarity with the Uyghurs to support the community on campus better. Many students stopped on their way to class to observe the protest and some asked questions out of curiosity about what was going on.