Why this Uyghur activist is campaigning to change street names in Tower Hamlets – My London

Rahima Mahmut, a singer who has been living in London for 21 years, is calling on Tower Hamlets Council to change the names of three locations around a large building that was recently acquired by the Chinese Embassy.

Its like theyre building their own palace there, Rahima fumes. Its like a fortress facing the Tower Bridge.

We are asking Tower Hamlets Council to dedicate three names to three different communities that are being affected by Chinese government oppression - Tibet Hill, Uyghur Court and Hong Kong Square, she says. It would be symbolic.

Rahima is an ethnic Uyghur. Uyghurs hail from the western Chinese province of Xinjiang. Several decades of Han Chinese migration from different parts of China has resulted in the Uyghurs becoming a minority in their homeland, which they prefer to call East Turkestan.

In the last few years particularly, Xinjiang has seen much media attention, amid allegations that China is holding as many as 3 million Uyghurs in concentration camps there.

READ MORE: China slaps sanctions on UK MPs in retaliation for Xinjiang human rights' claims

Rahima was born there, in the city of Gulja, and fled to London in the year 2000 when she noticed that things were getting from bad to worse.

I left after the Gulja Massacre, which happened on 5th February 1997. A peaceful protest was crushed and over 100 were killed on the day, followed by mass arrests. Amnesty International later reported that over 200 men who organised and participated in this peaceful protest were executed, Rahima tells MyLondon.

Up to 4,000 young men were arrested and given long-term prison sentences, including some of my relatives. Some died under torture.

According to Rahima, the crackdown on the Uyghur people and their cultural identity started at the end of 1996, when Chinese police went around arresting religious Uyghur Muslims. Uyghurs went on to march, demanding cultural and religious freedoms, but their peaceful protests were met by even more state violence.

"Everyone was thinking about how they could leave. There was no hope. It took me three years to get my passport and get a visa to come to the UK as a student. Two years later, my son and his father joined me. I never went back, Rahima says.

MyLondons brilliant new newsletter The 12 is packed with news, views, features and opinion from across the city.

Every day well send you a free email at around 12pm with 12 stories to keep you entertained, informed and uplifted. Its the perfect lunchtime read.

The MyLondon team tells London stories for Londoners. Our 45 journalists cover all the news you need - from City Hall to your local streets.

Never miss a moment by signing up to The 12 newsletter here.

Since coming to London, Rahima has been a voice for the Uyghurs she left behind. Even before their suffering came to light in recent news stories and television documentaries, she was working almost entirely on her own to raise awareness. One of the ways she did this was through her singing.

Ive tried to use every opportunity and every platform, she says. After coming to London, I found some musicians and we started the London Uyghur Ensemble, which included two other Uyghur musicians from Kyrgyzstan. We used music to raise awareness of the Uyghur people, their poetry, art and culture. Recently weve been doing more Silk Road music. We changed the bands name to London Silk Road Collective.

When people asked me where I came from, I didnt just tell them I came from China. We have a very distinct identity. We talk about types of cultural Uyghur music that are now under threat, like Meshrep, she adds. I try to reach out through my music, or through activism and protests. I give talks and speak at events to highlight what is happening, and to ask people and governments to help my people.

Rahima, who is also the UK director of the World Uyghur Congress and Executive Director of Stop Uyghur Genocide, which she established about a year ago, says that she believes there are about 500 Uyghurs currently living in the UK, most of whom live in London. Yet when it comes to organising protests against the Chinese government, very few of them actually turn up.

They are scared that they will get reported on and get into trouble when they go back (to Xinjiang). Some Uyghurs who went back in 2016 and 2017 were harassed and offered all kinds of incentives to report on Uyghurs here, she explains.

Some Uyghurs living here are even afraid to renew their Chinese passports because they know that if they reveal their names it will cause problems for their family back home, she continues, confessing that she herself has not heard of her nine siblings and friends in Xinjiang since 2017.

But in recent years Rahima has found more support for her cause. She personally helped work on an award-winning 2019 ITV documentary called Undercover: Inside China's Digital Gulag, and has also lobbied for three parliamentary actions to punish the Chinese regime for their alleged crimes.

One was for a genocide amendment on the trade deal (with China) which was tabled by Lord Alton of Liverpool, Rahima says. We campaigned very hard. Although the amendment didnt pass in the end, through this campaign we were able to educate almost every single MP about what was happening.

The second thing was a motion to vote whether Chinas government is committing genocide and that was unanimously passed. The latest one is the Olympic diplomatic boycott, which was also unanimously passed. So we hope now that government officials wont attend the Winter Olympics, which will be hosted by the Chinese regime next year, she goes on.

Nowadays Rahima is championing an independent peoples tribunal being led by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who previously prosecuted the late Yugoslav president Slobodan Miloevi for war crimes and genocide. The aim of the tribunal is to gather legal evidence against the Chinese authorities and prove that the genocide of the Uyghur people is indeed taking place in Xinjiang, after which the plan is to lobby the UK government into recognising the genocide officially.

The first hearing was in June. It was four days of intense accounts of people who lost their children and family members. Just recently we had a second hearing with more expert voices and internment camp survivors. The decision will be made on 9th December, Rahima says.

Rahima claims that even some witnesses who participated in the tribunal received phone calls threatening them not to give evidence. One Uyghur witness who testified said his family members were taken away just one day before he gave evidence. After the first hearing was completed, the Chinese government forced the family members of some of the witnesses to publicly condemn them on video, and brand them liars, she adds.

Asked what she plans to do next, Rahima says she has just released a new song called My dear son, when will you return, which features some 40 artists from all over the world. She also says she is on tour in Denmark, where shes singing classical Uyghur songs and talking to people there about what is happening in Xinjiang, or as she prefers to call it, East Turkestan.

Read the original here:

Why this Uyghur activist is campaigning to change street names in Tower Hamlets - My London