.

Does our society actually ensure that we all are free and equal? Because as I

speak to you, 1.5 million people in China have their freedom and rights taken just

because of their ethnicity and beliefs. My name is Raphael Baptista, and the

definition of being equal means that we all should have the same rights without

exceptions, the definition of being free means that we can choose for ourselves. At

the opposite end of the spectrum stand the situation of the Uyghur people, they are

being incarcerated just for being Muslim, they can't make their own choices, and in

shocking cases, they can't control what happens with their own bodies.

Many of you are probably wondering who these people are and why exactly

they are being incarcerated. The Uyghurs are an ethnic group that is widespread all

around central Asia, but a great part of the population lives in the Xinjiang region, an

autonomous region of China, and in 2017 the Chinese government started a

concentration camp, using the excuse that it would help “fight terrorism”. From then

on the Uyghurs have been incarcerated without any explanation besides that “they

impose a possible threat of terrorism”, and since the start of the program, many

people suffered the same fate as Saule Meltai, an Uyghur woman who was

incarcerated in the middle of the night, and had no rights to contact her family or to

defend itself in front of a jury. And the worst part is that this was just the beginning.

At the re-education camps, the nightmare begins. Nelson Mandela once said,

“No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not

be judged by how it treats its highest citizen but its lowest ones”. And if you saw what

happened in the “reeducation camps'' you would judge China with disgusted eyes.

Although officials of China won't admit it, the camps work essentially as prisons. But

even in a prison, the way that the prisoners are treated is disgusting, they have no
outside time, can’t see their relatives, have no connection to the outside world, and

are tortured. Sadly the situation gets disgustingly worse for female prisoners.

Now we get to the last breach of human rights, but it’s the one with utmost

importance. Unfortunately, the women in the Xinjiang camps are being

systematically raped, sterilized, and silenced by Chinese officials. Testimonials like

the ones of Tursunay Ziawudun, an Uyghur woman who is refugeed in Kazakhstan,

shocked the world. According to her, the officials would take one girl each night and

abuse her, after that they would sterilize the abused.

With all this horror happening at the same time as I speak, we should take a

moment and reflect. How can we help them? How can we change this miserable

situation? The answer is simple. Doing the only thing China doesn’t want us to do.

Give them voice, protest against their abuse, and demand that the refugees get a

space to live and a space to denounce the crimes against humanity that are being

committed in Xinjiang.