Iraqi Turkmen Front EU representative attends the Uyghur conference at the EU Parliament

May 4, 2010 at 10:29 pm | Posted in Turkmens | Leave a comment
Tags: Anver Can, Dolkun Isa, East Turkestan, Hassan Aydinli, Iraqi Turkmen Front EU representative, Nury Turkel, Rebiya Kadeer, Uyghurs, Xinjiang

 

UYGHURS AT THE EU PARLIAMENT IN BRUSSELS

 

 

 

 Mr. Anver Can, Former General Secretary of the World Uyghur Congress and of East Turkestan in Europe and Dr. Hassan Aydinli, Iraqi Turkmen Front EU representative

 

On this photo: Mr. Dolkun Isa, Mr. Anver Can, Dr. Hassan Aydinli, Mr. Abdumutalip.

Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF) Europe Representative, Hassan Aydinli and Merry FitzGerald, of Europe-Iraqi Turkmens Friendship Association received an invitation from Mr Dolkun Isa, the General Secreatry of the World Uyghur Congress in Europe,  to  attend the two-day conference entitled ‘Dialogue with China – Implementation of the Chinese Constitution to safeguard and protect the Rights of the Uyghur People’ at the European Parliament in Brussels.

China’s Uyghurs and Iraq’s  Turkmens share the same plight, they have both been suffering from an assimilation policy, from discrimination and from ethnic cleansing in their respective countries for several decades.

Uyghurs are considered as a minority by the totalitarian Chinese regime since more than 60 years (since the occupation of East Turkestan by the Chinese invasion and occupation forces in 1949).

Iraqi Turkmens are considered as a minority by the nationalistic Arab regimes that ruled the country during 85 years (from the end of the First World War in 1918 up to the regime change in Iraq by the US and the UK invasion and occupation forces on 9th April 2003) and by the hegemonic Kurdish regime which rules the north of Iraq since more than 7 years (since April 2003).

The Iraqi Turkmens’ representative in the EU participated in the conference to show the Turkmens’ support and solidarity with their Uyghur brothers in their struggle to stop the systematic violations of their human rights by the Chinese authorities and in their non-violent struggle for democratic freedoms. 

Mr. Niccolo Rinaldi MEP and Mr. Ivo Vajgl MEP convened this two-day conference at the European Parliament in Brussels on 29-30 April 2010 in collaboration with the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) and the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) entitled ‘Dialogue with China – Implementation of the Chinese Constitution to safeguard and protect the Rights of the Uyghur People’.

Mr. Niccolo Rinaldi MEP, Vice-Chair of ALDE

Mr. Marino Busdachin, UNPO General Secretary

Ms. Rebiya Kadeer, President of the World Uyghur Congress

Mr. Marco Perduca, Senator of the Italian Senate

Mr. Tashi Wangdi, EU representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Ms. Louisa Coan Greve, Vice President, National Endowment for Democracy

Mr. Dokun Isa, General Secretary of WUC and of the East Turkestan Union in Europe

Mr. Perhat Muhammad, Senior Researcher of WUC Research Centre & Vice-President of East Turkestan Union in Europe

Mr. Marco Panella, former MEP

and several specialists of the region shared their views and analysis.

  

Iraqi Turkmen Front EU representative with Mrs. Rebiya Kadeer, President of the World Uyghur Congresss (WUC)

 

 Uyghurs are one of China’s fifty-five nationalities; they are a Turkic-Muslim ethnicity which has been living in East Turkestan for generations.  Reoccupied by the Qing Dynasty in the mid-18^th century, this region had become a Chinese province named Xinjiang in 1884, and in 1955, after the communist takeover in late 1949, was reorganised as the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

East Turkestan, the area where Uyghurs established empires and a great civilization until invaded by China in 1884, has become the 19^th province of the Chinese Empire, and as Mr. Ahmed Faruk Ünsal, President of Mazlumder (Organisation of Human Rights and Solidarity for Oppressed People), Turkey who spoke at the conference pointed out, at first East Turkestan lost its name, and is now called “Xinjiang”, which means “newly conquered lands” in Cantonese.  Its demographic structure has been systematically changed through settlements of Chinese populations to East Turkestan and enforced migration of Uyghur people to inner regions of China.  The Uyghurs have been exposed to ecological disasters and cultural, religious and ethnic discrimination which can be deemed as ethnic cleansing.

 

As Mr. Willy Fautré, Director of HRWF International, pointed out, the protests in Xinjiang in July 2009 were the result of long-standing frustration and rancour against Beijing’s policy of economic, social and political marginalization of the Uyghurs in their ancestral lands. Beijing has steadily deprived the Uyghurs of their identity, their culture, their language, the management of their society and their development – while for years demonizing all opponents as separatists and terrorists.

The Chinese government continues its policy of transfer of Han people into Xinjiang and of Uyghur people outside their ancestral lands.  Among them 400,000 young, unmarried and mostly teenage Uyghur girls sent to ‘work’ in factories located in China’s eastern provinces.

Ms. Corinna Barabara Francis, Researcher on China, International Secretariat, Amnesty International, said that one of the key policies that have been steadily eroding Uyghurs cultural rights has been the policy to phase out instruction in Uyghur within the educational system in the Xingjang-Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).  Since the 1990s the Chinese authorities have been pursuing a program of “bilingual education” which in fact resulted in a switch to instruction exclusively, or primarily, in Putonghua. 

According to Ms. Marie Holzman, Sinologist, the relationship between the Han and the Uyghur community took a turn for the worse on July 5^th 2009.  This tragic event should have brought about a complete review of the Chinese government policy towards East Turkestan (Xinjiang as it is called in Bejing), instead of that, the repression, control and numerous humiliations towards the local population has become even more intense under the two pretexts of fighting separatism and terrorism.  What is to be feared now is that Chinese nationalism, which used to be a kind of exacerbated patriotism, should turn into Han nationalism against Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongol nationalism.

Mr. Nury A. Turkel, Attorney and former president of the Uyghur American Association (UAA) said it is in the best interest of European foreign policy to support moderate Muslims such as the Uyghur people and their struggle for democratic freedoms, including the right to be Muslim. Helping Uyghur Muslims will benefit Europe in the eyes of moderate Muslims, including Turkic people, throughout the world to take a stand in support of Uyghur’s legitimate human rights concerns. It is critically important for America and Europe to cultivate democratic, secular political thinking among Uyghurs no less than among Iraqis or other Muslim populations.