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PRESS RELEASE: WUC Highlights Attempts to Erode Uyghur Language on International Mother Language Day 2019

PRESS RELEASE: WUC Highlights Attempts to Erode Uyghur Language on International Mother Language Day 2019 Students read from their textbooks in a classroom at a bilingual middle school for ethnic-Uighur Muslim and Han Chinese students in Hotan, 13 October 2006, in China’s far northwest Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in Central Asia. In its long history of minority education, China has engaged its more than 50 or so minority groups in bilingual education, with an officially proclaimed aim to produce bilinguals with a strong competence in Putonghua (standard Chinese) as well as their native languages in an effort to help assimilate into mainstream society. However, modification of its educational policies to achieve seperate and distinct regional objectives often result in exclusionary practices of China’s educational policy, which aims to achieve universal education for all students yet at the same time contain regional ethnic resistance against the ruling Communist government and maintain national unity. AFP PHOTO/Frederic J. BROWN

Press Release – For immediate release
21 February 2019
Contact: World Uyghur Congress www.uyghurcongress.org
0049 (0) 89 5432 1999 or [email protected]

On UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day 2019, the World Uyghur Congress highlights the dire situation of the Uyghur language, as policies from the Chinese government have sought to erode and undermine its use. The Uyghur language continues to be suppressed with efforts over the two last years amounting to an outright ban of the language as a medium of instruction in schools affecting millions of students.

Language is an essential part of the social fabric and identity of any people, encapsulating thousands of years history and traditions through the spoken word. It forms an important bond between the Uyghur people and structures experiences of the world. It ties generations of Uyghurs together with one common thread, and uniting the Uyghur diaspora scattered across the world with relatives and countrymen in East Turkistan.

Uyghur Congress President Dolkun Isa emphasized that, “As the Chinese government strives to systematically socially reengineer the Uyghur people, using the unique Uyghur language becomes an important way of keeping Uyghur identity and culture alive.”

The attack on the Uyghur language is part of a broader campaign of assimilation from the Chinese government. In the past five years, we have witnessed the implementation of a coordinated and systematic attack on the Uyghur identity. As the Uyghur people possess their own culture, religion, history and ancestral land they have lived on for generations, Xi Jinping sees it as a threat to his power, along with Tibetans and Southern Mongolians. Any competing loyalties are not tolerated and are being stamped out ruthlessly.

Official policyof the Chinese government has focused especially on influencing young Uyghurs in an attempt to diminish the importance of the Uyghur language and sever ties to their ethnic identity. The approach appears to have two main focuses: discouraging the use of the language through language bans and ‘bi-lingual’ education classes and encouraging the use of Mandarin Chinese through preferential access to employment, universities and government positions for Mandarin speakers.

While learning Mandarin contributes to a more rich learning environment and connect Uyghur and Chinese speakers, efforts to totally erode Uyghur language and replace it with Mandarin is in clear violation of international law. It is worth noting that learning the Uyghur language is not a prerequisite for Chinese students in the region and the rest of China, while Uyghurs are being forced to learn Mandarin.

In a drastic step, a five-point directivewas issued by Hotan’s Education Department in late June 2017 outlawing the use of the Uyghur language for students at all education levels from primary to secondary schools. The ban is in clear violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child as well as China’s own Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law. Given the Chinese government’s propensity for testing policies at a lower level before enacting them as national policy, we are very concern that the language ban will soon extend to the whole region.

In the past two years, these efforts to undermine the Uyghur language have been further illustrated within the political indoctrination camp system with 1-2 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims arbitrarily detained. Survivors of the camps have testified that detainees are forced to take daily classes to learn Chinese, among other political indoctrination classes focusing on eroding Uyghur identity and culture and promoting loyalty to the Communist Party. It is evident that Uyghur language and culture are one of the key targets of China’s repressive policies in the region and of the internment camp system.

The WUC fears that if nothing changes, the younger generation of Uyghurs still living in East Turkistan will be cut off from their mother-tongue and their culture. This would not only lead to a ‘sinification’ of the Uyghur people, but the world would lose a truly unique language and culture. It would sever the ties between the Uyghur people, between older and younger generations and between those in East Turkistan and the diaspora.