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PRESS RELEASE: WUC Commemorates the 30 Year Anniversary of 1988 Uyghur Student Protests

PRESS RELEASE: WUC Commemorates the 30 Year Anniversary of 1988 Uyghur Student Protests

Press Release – For immediate release
15 June 2018
Contact: World Uyghur Congress
 www.uyghurcongress.org
0049 (0) 89 5432 1999 or [email protected]

The World Uyghur Congress commemorates the 30th anniversary of Uyghur student protests in Urumqi on June 15th, 1988. The protests themselves stood as an early reaction to Chinese policies in the 1980s that openly discriminated against the Uyghur students in particular, and one of the first large-scale public responses to discriminatory policies against Uyghurs that many students felt.

The 1988 protests were preceded by large student protests in 1985 that saw around 20,000 Uyghur students take to the streets over discriminatory education policies, birth control policies, the effects of nuclear testing in the Lop Nur region, a lack of genuine autonomy and representation in government and employment opportunities.

The environment in East Turkistan at the time was a population recovering from the effects of the Cultural Revolution, but at the same time Uyghurs were coping with the stresses of continued and accelerated Chinese migration to the region that was once dominated by Uyghurs.

Additionally, Uyghur leaders at the time understood that the brief opening following the Cultural Revolution would likely be brief. Abbas mentioned that that moment was, “their preparation stage, and once they became a little bit more strong, everything they allowed us back then became completely illegal […] Clearly it was heading back to what was happening during the Cultural Revolution.”

By 1988, certain tensions had risen and students continued to feel unsatisfied by a weak or otherwise non-existent reaction from regional authorities to real grievances. Although relations with Chinese in the region had not deteriorated to the point it has today, the spark that lit the powder keg would be a scrawled message on a bathroom door at the university in Urumqi reading “We will make Uyghur males our slaves, girls our prostitutes.”

The protests that ensued would spring new life into the movement and was led by current WUC President Dolkun Isa, who had earlier established the Scientific and Cultural Association that worked to visit Uyghur students around East Turkistan and inform them about the seriousness of disparities in education and other policies.

Following the protests, Isa was expelled from the university and was later forced to flee the country in 1994. Abbas was unable to gain employment teaching in Urumqi because of pressure from the government because of her activities. Both work tirelessly outside of East Turkistan today to raise the Uyghur human rights issue with the international community.

Much of what Uyghurs witnessed during and after these protests can be seen as the start of renewed campaign by the Chinese government to gradually erode the very identity and collective energy of the Uyghur people. What began as policies designed to gently assimilate has led to what we see today: the unlawful detention of upwards of one million Uyghurs in political indoctrination camps.

Tellingly, Abbas remarked that, “If we did today just one tenth of what we did in 1985 and 1988, we would be executed on Day 1.”

Throughout the year that marks the 30th anniversary of the Uyghur student protests, the World Uyghur Congress will be uncovering many of the untold stories from activists and observers who witnessed the events that initiated China’s repressive policies as well as much of the activism that we see in response to it today.