When I was a Uighur child living in communist China in the 1970s, we had no way of knowing what was going on in the world, in China, or even for our own workers in our homeland of East Turkistan (also known as Xinjiang, China). For colonized people like us, living under a total failure of information and bombed by communist propaganda 24/7, to discover that the truth was not a luxury – it was a desire, something for which we sometimes risk our lives.
I remember these days alive. My father gathered us in the middle of the night and began to settle our old radio, looking for foreign shows to discover what was going on in our homeland, where we lived. Due to the strict control of the Chinese Communist Party media and the severe sanctions for those who have requested external information, it was an act of challenge.
At the time, the only source of information for the Uighur people was propaganda in the media managed by the State. However, despite the risks, we want to hear the truth. In our house in the capital, Urumqi, we had a radio the size of a microwave with brilliant tubes inside. My father thoroughly refined him by hand every night. Sometimes the signal was clear; Other times, he was full of static. But that was the only source of free news in the outside world.
He always told us to remain silent and warned us not to mention to anyone that we listened to foreign shows. “If the Chinese communists discover it,” he said, “we will be seriously punished.”
We thought we were alone in this area. But in the late 1980s, we learned that many Uighur families secretly did the same thing – connecting to foreign voices in darkness.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, communist China not only survived, but prospered, largely due to the failure of America and its Western allies to grasp the colossal threat that this regime has posed. Today, China has become a global superpower, and perhaps the most serious national security threat to the United States and the democratic world.
Like all totalitarian regimes, communist China reigns by brute force and carefully organized propaganda designed to suppress the truth. From the massacre of the Tiananmen square to the pandemic of Covid-19, China manipulates the perception of the public and rewrites history. For the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, information is both a weapon and a shield. Its total media control ensures that its rule remains undisputed. But there is one thing that the regime fears the most: the truth.
The CCP does not only use propaganda to wash the brain of its inhabitants. He armaments against perceived, foreign and domestic enemies. The success of its rule of more than 1.4 billion people for more than 75 years lies in its ability to create and control the story.
This is why the creation of the Uighur Service of Radio Free Asia (RFA) in November 1998 was a historic moment. Finally, the bears that have suffered for a long time had a voice – which could speak to the world of the atrocities they had endured under communist Chinese domination since 1949. The Uighurs in the Fatherland have rejoiced, seeing in America – the leader of the free world – a headlight of hope and justice. Unsurprisingly, China has condemned this decision, its Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced the creation of the first independent Uighur International Oighour Radio Service.
By virtue of the brutal rule of China, the Uïghoure people have never been authorized to an independent voice. Anyone who dared to denounce the communist regime was quickly reduced to silence – labeled as a “separatist”, “extremist” or “terrorist” and disappeared.
This has been particularly true since 2017, when China began to have around 1.8 million UGHurs in concentration camps and forcibly separated their parents from their parents to be sent to Chinese residents. This systematic targeting of an entire ethnic group was finally described as genocide and crimes against humanity by the first Trump administration. The European Parliament has echoed this conviction and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has published a report indicating that China’s actions can constitute crimes against humanity.
A large part of this international recognition was made possible by the revolutionary reports of the Uighur RFA service. Despite the threat of reprisals against their families in China, the Uighur journalists of the FRG surveyed without fear and exposed the Orwellian surveillance state that Beijing had imposed on their people.
The United States Agency for the World Media (USAGM) has recognized the formidable contributions made by the brave Uighur RFA journalists. USAGM states on its website:
“The Oighour Radio Free Asia service was the first to report on the implementation of a vast state of high -tech security in the autonomous region or mass arbitrary detentions of the Xinjiang which sweep the mainly Muslim Uighur population and other ethnic groups in the region at the beginning of 2017, when the question of the situation was invoking. Since then, since then, since then, since then, since then, since then, since then, since then, since then, since then, since then, since then, since then since, since then, since then, since then, Rfahur has been in the ten and the world has been an independent of the situation. Since then, since, since then, Rfahur tirelessly, has continued to break the key stories that highlight events, aspects and developments in a massive humanitarian crisis. Our lives.
The closure of the Uighur RFA service would be a tragedy. For a people who are still suffering under an in progress genocide, they turn off a light of vital hope. China would grasp the moment to say to the Ughurs: “You are forgotten. No country, not even America, no longer cares.” It would be a powerful psychological blow, not only to Uighurs, but to millions through China that considered the United States as a symbol of justice, democracy and freedom.
If America lets the Uighur Service of the FRG disappear, it risks abandoning an entire people and giving in the war of information to a regime that thrives on lies.
The UYGHOUR RFA service is worth it to be saved – and is worth every penny that has spent since its creation. Preserving it allows the United States to stand on moral ground and repel China’s disinformation campaigns. He guarantees that the truth can still be told about the genocide, the repression and the resilience of a people who refuses to be erased.
Dr. Rishat Abbas is a pharmaceutical scientist based in the United States and president of Uyghur Academy International. The Academy is a global network of Uighur intellectuals which sensitize to the Uighur genocide and seek to counter the influence of the CCP abroad and to preserve language, culture and identity or Uighur. The opinions expressed in this comment are the own Dr. Abbas.