The Executive Director of ‘Campaign for Uyghurs’ and activist Rushan Abbas has said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is replicating the tyranny of Mao Zedong by persecuting the intellectuals, the recent victim of it being Hursan Hassan, who has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
In an opinion article, Rushan compared the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” of 1966, initiated by Mao Zedong to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims in East Turkistan.
She described the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” as a period during which millions of civil servants, writers and teachers were fired, elites and artists were attacked, many intellectuals were labeled “counter-revolutionaries,” beaten or killed; others were sent to corrective labor camps.
“The nations that were occupied by Zedong — such as East Turkistan, Tibet, and Southern Mongolia — suffered the greatest damage from the Cultural Revolution,” she said.
“The devotion of these regions to their own languages, religions, and traditions was deliberately destroyed by the Cultural Revolution. The persecution of what were then the “Red Guards” continues today with the use of paramilitary forces and police in their genocide against Uighurs,” she added.
She further said that the CCP, knowing that the way to destroy a nation is to destroy its intellectuals first, is replicating the tyranny of 50 years ago.
“The recent sentencing of Hursan Hassan to 15 years in prison by the CCP is another example of its brutal persecutions,” she added.
Hassan, 50 years old, has had an accomplished career as a voice actor and short film director. He was recognized by the China Film Association and China Federation of Literary and Art Circles in October 2018, just two months prior to his abduction. In spite of his law-abiding personal life and respectable professional career, he was detained in December 2018.
“Known for his great talent and sense of humor, his family was horrified to learn that just a few days after his wrongful arrest he had emergency room treatment — despite being entirely healthy before his detention. Hassan is one of the leading intellectuals in the Uighur community. He has a university education in languages and was even applauded by the CCP at times,” Rushan said.
She further said that the “reeducation camps” for Uighurs are inspired by the example of the Nazis in Germany during World War II.
“Uighurs are targeted for the sole reason that they are not Chinese,” she added.
In 2018, she said, having a Muslim Uighur identity automatically resulted in being sent to camps for reeducation. “After being forced to stay in various camps for 20 months, Hassan was accused of a crime concocted by the CCP and sentenced to 15 years in prison on the charge of separatism.”
Hassan’s relatives in America learned from family members in East Turkistan that he had been abducted. His sister, Sayyare Hassan attributes her brother’s abduction to him being a Uighur personality.
She did not hear from her brother for almost 20 months, only getting news about him on September 4, 2020.
Sayyare Hassan said that East Turkistan’s people are experiencing a humanitarian crisis. “The world needs to support us, to help the Uighur people regain our most basic human rights”.
She further said: “This case is another example of the CCP establishing so-called vocational training centers and wrongfully imprisoning Uighur elites.
“Hursan Hassan is a well-educated, respected, intelligent, successful person who has never needed such training. This is another example of the regime’s systematic denunciation and destruction of innocent Uighur people.”
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