Portions of the included interview have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Over the past decade, reports have revealed that the Chinese state committed systematic human rights violations against the Uyghur population. The Uyghurs are of Turkic origin, with a population of roughly 15-20 million living in East Turkestan. Today, the region falls under Chinese administration as the “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.”
Violations of the Chinese government against Uyghurs include the mass detention of 1.2 million people, the forced separation of families, coercive birth-control measures, and severe restrictions on religious and cultural practices. Such transgressions on the Uyghur population have led many to flee the area, creating a diasporic community: a spread of the population across different regions of the world.
Alerk Ablikim, a Dutch Uyghur activist born in Urumchi, uprooted his life in 2007 after his mother discovered horrors being committed in the area. During a fieldwork trip as a doctor in southern East Turkestan, she discovered unethical human experiments on Uyghur patients. After reporting what she witnessed, the family faced police intimidation and no longer felt safe in the country. In 2007, Alerk’s family sought asylum in the Netherlands, where they have continued to build their life since 2008.
Today, Alerk’s work takes place in a rapidly shifting political landscape. The Netherlands, like many European countries, is seeing rising political polarization: from the electoral success of far-right parties to a renewed presence of the D66 social-liberal party. Such a changing environment shapes not only national debates but also how diasporas position themselves within Dutch society. In an interview with Spheres of Influence, Alerk touches on his life as an activist and the broader question of what it means to advocate for justice in the Netherlands.
How did you start to become politically active? What do you do now?
It all started when I lost contact with my father around 2015. As chief publisher of the Xinjiang Juvenile Publishing House, he was required under new regulations to join the Chinese Communist Party, which meant he could no longer safely speak to a son who had fled China. Our contact eventually stopped completely by late 2016. Then, in early 2019, my uncle from Kazakhstan reached me with devastating news: both my father and aunt had been taken to a “re-education camp.” This shocked me, especially as many Uyghurs in our community were losing contact with relatives.
When I began university, I entered a more reflective phase and felt a responsibility to help my father. At the time, video testimonies were common among Uyghurs in the diaspora. People recorded short videos about missing family members, which sometimes helped secure their release. I decided to make one too. The video spread quickly and reached a Dutch journalist from Nieuwsuur. A week later, the first Xinjiang police files leaked, providing concrete evidence of the scale of the abuse, and the journalist asked to interview me. The item was published the same day, and from there, everything snowballed.
I joined the youth organization Association Free Uyghur and became a political secretary. My role had three parts: acting as the media contact, representing the Uyghur community in Dutch political spaces, and supporting young Uyghurs struggling with identity and integration. The youth organization later joined a broader Uyghur platform in the Netherlands, and I became one of three representatives for the entire community, a position I held for about five years.
In May last year, I stepped back from formal Uyghur organizations. Through my activism, I realized I had strong knowledge of Dutch politics and wanted to focus more on policy advocacy, not only for Uyghurs but also for Tibetans, Hong Kongers, Southern Mongolians, and Chinese dissidents. To work effectively with all these groups, I needed a neutral position. I began defining my expertise in three areas: human rights policy, diaspora policy, and Inner Asian geopolitics, which focuses on the land routes connecting Asia to Europe (EU), including issues like the Belt and Road Initiative, the EU’s Global Gateway, and the Middle Corridor. From this position, I now manage a coalition of Uyghur, Tibetan, Hong Konger, and Southern Mongolian organizations; this is essentially my work today.
Do you feel that Dutch society recognizes and respects the political concerns of diasporic communities like the Uyghurs? Why or why not?
To an extent. There are two ways the political sphere and the broader Dutch public would concern themselves about us.
One is from a moralistic point of view, which is: “The genocide is happening, women are being sterilized, and millions of people are being incarcerated. We need to do something about this.”
And the second one is from an opportunistic perspective: “I’m against China for whatever reason. I’m also going to talk about this, so I can be against China.”
What I’m afraid of is that there’s this increase in the second part. The second part has always been there, but you can manage it to some extent. But there is a growing number of people who no longer believe in the moral principles of the international rules-based order. They are focused mainly on themselves and their own concerns, whether it’s migration or something else, and they don’t want any system, democracy, or rule of law to stand in their way. This [attitude] is now such an increased problem that even if it does cause a lot of Dutch people to care about the Uyghurs, [the care] will be short-term and not true, which is the element we need.
Have you ever joined or collaborated with a Dutch political party? If so, what factors influenced your decision?
I do collaborate with a lot of Dutch political parties, from the right to the left and across the center. The far right has always been difficult because they don’t really do [advocacy] work anyway. They’re just there, not even there sometimes. During my work with Dutch parties, I try to present myself as someone who has information. I think the basic principle of lobbying is information at the right time to the right people. That’s the power of information.
I joined the Green Party when I was 17. Now the Green Party in the Netherlands is fused with the social democratic parties. Personally, I try to separate my own political leanings from the advocacy work I do.
Do you see a difference between how left-wing and right-wing parties approach minority representation and human rights issues?
Yes. The right uses human rights rhetoric a lot, but doesn’t truly care about them. The left genuinely cares, but doesn’t have the skills to take effective action geopolitically. Both sides have clear weaknesses in different ways, in my opinion.
I think the most underrated element of advocacy is just knowing the people you’re talking to: the individual people that are the parliamentarians who cooperate with you or are willing to listen. That personal relationship is also very important.
Has the rise of right-wing populism and xenophobia in the Netherlands changed the atmosphere for minority activists like yourself? If so, in what ways?
Definitely. A lot of policy debates that used to be considered normal no longer get enough attention because the far right and populist voices take up so much space in politics.
From a personal standpoint, I have noticed for the first time that there are moments in my life when I do not feel Dutch anymore. Of course, I became Dutch, and I am Dutch and Uyghur, but almost never, at no point did I really feel like I stopped being a Dutch person. Most of the time, I dream in Dutch, and my partner is Dutch. In that sense, I am truly part of this society.
But now there are movements and elements within the political sphere that are saying that people who have a different background, who are immigrants, who are a certain colour, can never be part of the Dutch system. If they just deny your right to exist here, it’s hard to deal with.
How do Dutch media, institutions, or politicians typically react to issues related to the Uyghur community in your experience?
First of all, there’s not much to react to because there’s basically no news about the Uyghurs on a usual basis. There are many reasons why it isn’t happening.
One of the things is that I don’t believe in the idea that some people have that the media is meant to inform us about the world. The media is there to report on extraordinary events. It is your responsibility to inform yourself of the world, and the news is just there to keep you informed of developments that are happening. But if you do not understand the world as it is, there is nothing to inform you about. When it comes to the Uyghurs, once the whole concentration camp thing happens, there’s not much news about it because it just keeps happening.
Secondly, people have always had priorities. Not by their own decision, but by how they look at the world. So what do they include within their in-group idea? So, if there’s some tragedy somewhere else, I don’t think that it gets the same amount of coverage because we don’t include those areas as part of “our group”.
Lastly, the Chinese government has been very effective in cutting off a lot of information sources and being able to wage quite an effective hybrid war when it comes to information and disinformation.
In my personal experience, at the start, I accepted everything when I was in the media. The whole narrative was usually, “Look at this poor Uyghur whose family members are in camps.” It was all about victimization. In a way, that’s true, because we are victims, but the focus was only on that, and after a while, I got sick and tired of it. I also want to highlight the strength of the [Uyghur] community, because even though the genocide has been happening for a long time, this community is still here, still trying to maintain who they are.
But I also see it as my job, as a Dutch Uyghur, to connect what happens in the Uyghur world to the Dutch context and translate our experiences into something they can understand. That is the only way the message can truly reach them.
Reflection on the Previous Elections
Looking ahead to the next legislative period, what would you consider a “win” for minorities like the Uyghurs under this new government? What do you think about the outcome of the recent elections?
The most positive part is that the far right won’t govern again, in my opinion. The less positive thing is that the political center has moved towards the right, but I’m happy with the largest political party winning because they are good at maintaining conversations with diasporas.
However, I do believe that the core issues that led people to turn to the far right are grievances about globalization and the rise of inequality, the saturation of what is possible within Western societies, and all those kinds of real bread-and-butter issues that people perceive. I’m not sure that the upcoming government without the far right will solve those problems. So as long as they don’t solve the problems, there will always be this feeding ground for the far right and populism.
What reforms would you like to achieve with the new government?
The Dutch [Government] has this concept that China is a partner, a competitor, and a strategic rival—all at the same time.
This is just not correct. China is a strategic rival, and it can in no way be perceived as a partner, because China itself links economic issues to its strategic ambitions. Western countries cannot do that. They go to China for state visits, take 80 companies with them, have a 15-minute talk on human rights, and then move on to business deals. The Chinese government is not going to accept that anymore, because they see the whole human rights discussion as interference. A new strategy should include more tools in its toolbox to work with China.
I would like the naming of our communities—Tibetans, Uyghurs, Hong Kongers—and I would like us to have a certain voice within the system that, as I said, moves beyond just the human rights topic. What we are trying to say is that we understand China. There was this idea back in 2008, during the Olympics, that China would become a modern, democratic, liberal country. But it didn’t. We know that because we experience China’s peripheral suppression firsthand. That’s why we argue that we are a strategic partner, because we understand how the Chinese political system works at its worst.
What I would also like to see is the narrative around Uyghurs to change. You still often hear people talk about ‘Xinjiang,’ but that word itself means ‘new frontier,’ which itself is a colonial term. Western countries are still very hesitant to challenge China and to call the region what it really is: Eastern Turkestan. There’s also this constant narrative that portrays Uyghurs as ‘Chinese Muslim minorities,’ but we are not Chinese. We are not all Muslim, and we are certainly not a minority in our own homeland.
And one more thing: I want to reduce the ways in which the Dutch system might be indirectly complicit in what’s happening. For example, when Dutch companies import products made with forced Uyghur labour, or when investments end up supporting Chinese industries involved in repression, that makes us part of the problem. I want to minimize that connection as much as possible. If the Chinese Government is going to carry out a genocide, then at the very least, it shouldn’t be with our money.
How do you envision the future of global advocacy?
Very poor, the civic space in which advocacy happens is shrinking. It is not even under threat; it is being eroded.
In the past, organizations like Amnesty International would focus on specific people— for example, political prisoners—and their release would serve as a symbol of what activism could achieve. But that kind of focus doesn’t really exist anymore.
Today, it feels like countries simply don’t care. Imagine if Russia or China were to kill someone abroad tomorrow: I don’t think there would be any real consequences, given the world we live in now. The protection of individuals who are fighting the good fight just isn’t there anymore, which makes everything so much more difficult.
I feel there are two options. You can either adapt to this change in the world, this multipolar, power-based world, or try to make yourself at least a voice within that power play. If you are deep within yourself, trying to do something good, then things will work out.
Edited by Emma Webb
