{"id":72,"date":"2023-04-29T11:55:20","date_gmt":"2023-04-29T15:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/?p=72"},"modified":"2023-04-29T11:55:26","modified_gmt":"2023-04-29T15:55:26","slug":"rfa-japanese-woman-of-uyghur-origin-wins-seat-in-japans-parliament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/rfa-japanese-woman-of-uyghur-origin-wins-seat-in-japans-parliament\/","title":{"rendered":"RFA: Japanese woman of Uyghur origin wins seat in Japan\u2019s parliament"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Arfiya Eri\u2019s election gives hope to second-generation Uyghurs living in exile, advocates say<\/p><\/div>\n

A Japanese woman of Uyghur ethnicity and who was educated in the United States has been elected a member of the Japanese parliament \u2014 the first person of Uyghur heritage to run as a major party candidate in an election there.<\/p>\n

Arfiya Eri, a 34-year-old member of the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, was elected on Sunday to the lower house of the Japanese Diet to represent Chiba prefecture\u2019s 5th district. She captured the seat previously held by Kentaro Sonoura, a former LDP lawmaker who resigned last December over a political funds scandal.<\/p>\n

The World Uyghur Congress, or WUC, applauded the election of Eri, also known as Alfiya Hidetoshi, as the first Uyghur woman to be elected to any parliament, and the first Uyghur-Japanese politician to hold a seat in the Diet, or Japanese parliament. <\/p>\n

Eri beat six other candidates from Chiba to win the contentious election, receiving about 5,000 votes more than the candidate who came in second, said Sawut Memet, a standing committee member of the Japanese Uyghur Association, based in Tokyo. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis historic victory is significant for the Uyghur Japanese community, as well as the global Uyghur diaspora community,\u201d the organization said in a statement issued Monday. \u201cThe WUC firmly believes that she will serve the interests of the Japanese citizens, and the country, at the same time raising the Uyghur issue in the Japanese Parliament and other high-level forums.\u201d <\/p>\n

Eri\u2019s election comes as Uyghur rights groups have called on the international community to take concrete action against China for committing severe rights abuses against the mostly Muslim group in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.<\/p>\n

Japan\u2019s government in recent years has expressed concern about human rights conditions in Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has detained Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in \u201cre-education\u201d camps, monitored them with intrusive digital surveillance technologies, subjected them to forced labor, and worse.<\/p>\n

Japan\u2019s Lower House adopted a resolution in February 2022, expressing concern over the human rights situation in China, including the plight of the Uyghurs, and called on Beijing to take measures to address the situation. <\/p>\n

That September, WUC President Dolkun Isa asked the Japanese parliament to declare that China\u2019s abuse of the Uyghurs amounted to a genocide, following similar determinations of genocide and crimes against humanity by the U.S. State Department and several Western legislatures.<\/p>\n

Her election has \u201ctremendous positive implications for Uyghurs,\u201d showing that they are not \u201cterrorists\u201d as China has made them out to be to justify its repressive policies in Xinjiang, Memet told RFA. <\/p>\n

—more<\/a>—<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Japanese woman of Uyghur ethnicity and who was educated in the United States has been elected a member of the Japanese parliament \u2014 the first person of Uyghur heritage to run as a major party candidate in an election … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eastern-turkestan","category-human-dignity","category-human-rights"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74,"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}