Statement – For Immediate Release
21 February 2022
Contact: World Uyghur Congress www.uyghurcongress.org
0049 (0) 89 5432 1999 or [email protected]

On International Mother Language Day, the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) calls attention to the threats that the Uyghur language faces in East Turkistan and abroad, as the Chinese government critically suppresses the teaching of the Uyghur language, including an outright ban of the language as a medium of instruction over the past years.

“The Uyghur language has been under threat for many years as China’s assimilatory policies have targeted language as a central element of our identity.”, WUC President Dolkun Isa said. “This has led to a situation where Uyghurs are increasingly out of touch with their mother language, which also endangers the transmission of Uyghur culture more broadly.”

While the Chinese government has weakened and replaced the Uyghur language through its so-called ‘bilingual education’ system over the past years, the outright ban of the Uyghur language as a medium of instruction has further endangered the transmittal of the language in East Turkistan. Moreover, Uyghurs in the concentration camps and children in state-run boarding schools are forbidden from speaking their language, instead forced to learn and speak Mandarin. 

In the face of the threats that the Uyghur language faces, Uyghurs in the diaspora have intensified efforts to safeguard their language. One of the recent most successful efforts was the development of the Uyghur Braille Script by Harris Mowbray and Uyghur scholars. The project, which built upon decades of previous, unfinished efforts, was completed in 2021. It marks an important effort to safeguard the Uyghur language and to ensure that those in the Uyghur diaspora who are visually impaired are able access this part of our cultural heritage, and transmit it to future generations.

Today, to celebrate the creation of the Uyghur braille script, the WUC organises an online panel discussion with scholars and researchers who were involved in the creation of the Uyghur braille script. The panel discussion will discuss the process of the creation of the Uyghur braille script, as well as its significance in the context of restrictive linguistic policies by the Chinese authorities as part of the wider human rights atrocities in the Uyghur region.
For more information and to register for the panel discussion, see here.