Hi John,

This is the first time I’m writing to HOPE not hate supporters, so let me introduce myself: my name is Rahima Mahmut. I’m a Uyghur singer and activist in exile, and I lead “Stop Uyghur Genocide”, the UK-based campaign to defend Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims from the genocide being perpetrated against them by the Chinese government. 

I was born in Ghulja, near the Kazakhstan border, and I come from a large Muslim family. I came to the UK in 2000, a few years after Chinese police massacred peaceful protestors in my hometown, and have lived here ever since. 

It has now been more than five years since I have had any contact with my family back home. As reports of concentration camps and unprecedented surveillance emerged from the Uyghur region (so called “Xinjiang”) in 2017, thousands of Uyghurs in exile like me received final messages from their family, all communicating the same thing: please do not contact us – when things change, we will reach out to you.

Uyghurs like myself that have spoken out, including brave concentration camp survivors, do so at huge personal cost. But we won’t be silenced. 

Sunday marks the closing ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, coined the “Genocide Games” by campaigners and activists across the world due to the Chinese government’s persecution of the Uyghurs and other Turkic groups native to the Uyghur region.

While China puts on a show to entertain the world, the genocide continues with alarmingly little attention for the plight of the Uyghurs. Let’s use this moment while the world’s attention is on China to stand in solidarity with the Uyghurs and shine a spotlight on the genocide taking place in my homeland.

Will you take part in a “Twitter storm” to tell the world that while China celebrates the end of the Beijing Olympics, the genocide against the Uyghurs continues? 

Not on Twitter? Read and share this blog which explains more about what’s happening in the Uyghur region and what we can do about it. 

It is estimated that anywhere between 1 and 3 million Uyghurs are forcibly detained in so-called “re-education camps”, where systemic sexual violence, cultural erasure, birth prevention measures, organ harvesting and torture are commonplace. 

And outside the camps, Uyghurs are transported across China to work in factories, under prison-like conditions and subject to a mass-surveillance state that monitors their daily practises. 

This has been going on for years with almost no consequences for the Chinese government. China hosting the Olympics adds to their legitimacy, despite the atrocities being committed there. If you agree this is unacceptable, please join me in speaking out on social media on the day of the Olympics closing ceremony.

(Or read and share this blog which explains more about what’s happening in the Uyghur region and what we can do about it.)

Thank you for reading and for your support, 

Rahima

Rahima Mahmut
UK Director of the World Uyghur Congress and Executive Director of Stop Uyghur Genocide