Fakty Miami
(RNS) — “We’re neurosurgeons, of course we’re never home in time for dinner,” one doctor said on TikTok recently, following a tongue-in-cheek trend on the social media site in which users list their group’s stereotypes or defining characteristics.
“I’m a Costco girl, of course I eat the free sample,” said another creator in a video with 3.5 million views on Instagram.
“We’re from New Jersey, of course we don’t pump our own gas,” Kevin Jonas quipped on the Jonas Brothers’ TikTok account.
Last weekend, a post with more serious undertones by a little-known group called the Uyghur Youth Initiative joined the viral trend.
“We’re Uyghurs, of course we’re suffering from a genocide in 2024,” Mukaddes Memet, 18, said in a video posted by the German-based organization.
Filmed following a recent pro-Uyghur protest in Munich, the video has since had more than 3 million views on TikTok and 7.5 million hits on Instagram. It features Memet along with Amina Tursun, 21, and Esma Memtimin, 20, bundled in coats and scarves and walking along snow-covered city streets.
“We’re Uyghurs, of course we’re always late,” Tursun said to the camera.
“We’re Uyghurs, of course we go to protests instead of school,” said Memtimin.
“We’re Uyghurs, of course we don’t know if our families are alive or not,” said Memet.
China has long been criticized for targeting the Uyghurs, ethnically Turkic people who are predominantly Sunni Muslim. Many live in what Uyghurs call East Turkistan, but China, which colonized the region in 1949, calls it “Xinjiang,” meaning “New Territory.” In response to the Uyghur independence movement, in 2014 President Xi Jinping began detaining reportedly more than 1 million Uyghurs in prison-like re-education camps for alleged infractions, ranging from having more than two children to wearing a headscarf.
Former detainees and human rights groups have alleged that the government subjected Uyghurs to forced sterilization, sexual abuse, psychological abuse and forced labor. Eyewitnesses have also reported extreme surveillance measures in the region, and researchers estimate that authorities have