The 15th session of the United Nations Forum on Minority Issues (UN Forum) “Review. Rethink. Reform. 30th anniversary of the UN Declaration on Minority Rights” Remarks of Zubayra Shamseden, Vice President, World Uyghur Congress December 1, 2022 “There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a third power stronger than both, that of women” — Malala Yousafzai Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak; I am honored to be here on behalf of World Uyghur Congress; I am also honored to share the Uyghur people’s situation with many like-minded peoples here. I am a Uyghur woman, a mother of 3 children, a wife, and a professional rights defender for the Uyghur people. Alongside other minorities in China, Uyghurs are severely persecuted people by the Chinese government. Uyghurs are not a minority people in our own homeland in East Turkistan. Like myself, all Uyghurs prefer to call our homeland “East Turkistan,” not the Chinese government-imposed name “Xinjiang” or the “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” in 1955. Although the name East Turkistan doesn’t imply any political meaning as China claims, it is simply the meaning of Tukic people’s land in the East. I have been defending the rights of my people since the late 1980s from a very young age. While my other Chinese graduate friends were dreaming about prestigious jobs and enjoying life after college, I was searching for answers to my questions: why am I treated differently from the majority Han people? What I witnessed and experienced under a repressive Chinese regime in my homeland made me choose a path to become a defender of the defenseless. The Chinese government has detained an estimated 2-3 million Uyghurs in mass internment camps since 2016, out of a population of about 12 million; Uyghurs call them concentration camps because innocent people are hauled into these camps based on their religion and ethnic identity. There is no judicial process, there is no appeal.