Freedom and Family: Landscape and transformation of Uyghur Human Rights Activism


DATE
Wednesday October 26, 2022
TIME
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

The Social Justice Institute Noted Scholars Series presents

Freedom and Family: Landscape and transformation of Uyghur Human Rights Activism

by Kabir Qurban and UBC Researcher

Decorative Event Banner with Artwork by Molly Crabapple showing Uyghur family separation


WHEN & WHERE
October 26th, 12-1pm
Buchanan Tower 1099

Please RSVP below in advance

Note: This is an in-person event that will not be recorded or livestreamed.


Family relations have proved a major source of both strength and vulnerability for Uyghurs and their diaspora activism. For years, this importance has been exploited by the Chinese government to control Uyghurs inside and outside of China. From the government perspective, Uyghur family relations are both a convenient tool and a liability in their attempt to silence the activism. This presentation tells the story of a significant rise and development in Uyghur diaspora grassroot activism during the peak years of large scale mass incarceration of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang (2017–2020). It relates how family relations and kinship became both a main motivating and inhibiting factor for this activism. It follows several young Uyghurs who turned into activists when they lost contact with their parents, siblings, spouses or children in Xinjiang to examine their motivation and trajectories of activism. Based on fieldwork among diaspora activists and discourse analysis of social media activism, the presentation explores how a new demography of young, well educated and well integrated Uyghurs in the diaspora who had kept silent to protect their families back home (and to a degree their own privileges) after 2017 took up activism as a response to losing their loved ones. For some of them, re-connection with their families has led to renewed silence after 2020, as the Chinese government has been seeking to reinstate these control mechanisms by mounting pressure on the relatives of activists. Our talk is the story of this intense and ever-transforming relationship between Uyghur kinship and Uyghur activism; kinship can motivate activism and summon international solidarity around it, but it has also been used to control and split it and may now be partially-responsible for its decline.


Headshot of Kabir QurbanKabir Qurban is a Secondary school teacher and a program coordinator at Muslim Foodbank and Community services who works heavily in support of the Uyghur people and advocating their human rights. Kabir’s passions include advocacy for all human rights and youth education. Kabir also is a blog writer and an award winning film producer. You may catch him at the local rivers trying to fish for salmon or camping in the Pacific Northwest.

Accessibility: Buchanan Tower 1099 is accessible by elevator. There are gendered washrooms in the stairwell and a gender-neutral, accessible washroom on the 1st floor.