A collective in favor of Uyghurs takes action in Lyon and calls for the support of elected officials

Who are the Uyghurs?

This Muslim minority living in China has been persecuted by the Chinese government for several years. She is brainwashed in camps where women are given abortion pills, while children are brainwashed from an early age so as to forget their Uyghur culture. Adults are uprooted, sent en masse to production factories several kilometers away and exploited as cheap labor. This “re-education process” is qualified as genocide by certain associations and political figures.

—

Awareness

At 21, Rania Ziani is particularly involved in the cause of the Uyghurs. “It is unacceptable to torture people in 2021”, she blows.

Being of Muslim faith, I identify with them. If I had been born there, I could have been tortured, raped and even killed just because I was a Uyghur.

A law student at the University of Lyon 3, she is desperate to read “beautiful words” in the UN charter that she has at home, “without anything being done”.

So in the face of injustice, Rania Ziani wants “to act on her own scale, that’s the least of things”.

And it starts with raising awareness among the general public, which she says is not sufficiently aware of the situation. This Saturday morning, she distributed leaflets in front of the Zara and Nike stores, in downtown Lyon.

–

These brands are accused of using Uyghur labor and indirectly supporting the abuses committed by the Chinese government.

Have the support of elected officials

An action which also aims to attract the attention of local elected officials. In a petition, the collective asks the mayors of the Lyon area, as well as the president of the Métropole Bruno Bernard, to sign the charter of solidarity with the Uyghur people.

“We would like to have their support to feel legitimate before making a request to the UN”, explains Rania Ziani to Lyon news.

If she is aware that a signature on a piece of paper will not change the fate of the Uyghurs, the activist believes that “it is better than silence, it is already a small step”.

In any case, she hopes that these signatures will have a domino effect and “that by making noise, the information will end up passing to the international level”.

The City of Lyon wants to “go further” in supporting the Uyghurs

Small steps, the City of Lyon also ensures. On February 12, the Assistant for International Relations, Sonia Zdorovtzoff, wrote on behalf of several elected environmentalists a forum in The world appellant European states to “stop sacrificing respect for human rights for the benefit of a few multinationals”.

Contacted by Lyon news, the deputy ensures that the work continues, in particular around the famous solidarity charter that the collective wants to sign.

“We are working with Uyghur researcher Dilnur Reyhan to try to enrich the platform before signing it“, She explains.

Certain passages are not suitable for the ecological town hall and this from the first article of the charter in which it is mentioned that the signatories undertake “to stand unconditionally alongside the Uyghur people”. For Sonia Zdorovtzoff, the term “unconditionally” is confusing : “If in 50, 70 years, there is a turnaround, we engage Lyon in a delicate position”.

Also, the City of Lyon does not want to promote one cause more than another.

We are very careful, we know that the slightest word can very quickly be misinterpreted and turn against us

Above all, if Lyon is slow to sign this charter, it is because it is aware that “it will not be enough to make China bend” and “that as a city, [elle] does not have much power ”.

–