Public Diplomacy: Promoting Uyghur Human Rights Abroad
Client
Overview
In 2021, I was tapped to develop a campaign for the U.S. Department of State to help educate the European public about human rights abuses committed by the People’s Republic of China. This public diplomacy initiative focused on the Uyghur community, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority living mostly in Xinjiang (also called East Turkestan or the Uyghur homeland), a province in northwest China. ​
Since 2017, the Chinese government has engaged in systematic oppression of Uyghurs, citing the East Turkestan independence movement as a “terror”threat. Since then, an estimated 1 million Uyghurs have been disappeared into “re-education” or concentration camps with little to no due process. Meanwhile, approximately 12 million Uyghurs living in Xinjiang have been regularly subjected to pervasive digital and physical surveillance, forced labor, forced sterilization, family separation, religious persecution, and suppression of the Uyghur language and culture. ​
Xinjiang, traditionally known as East Turkestan until 1949, is home to more than 12 million Uyghurs.
Aligned with U.S. foreign policy objectives, the campaign sought to counter China’s growing political and economic influence among historically allied countries. In partnership with the DOS Bureau of Global Public Affairs and U.S. embassies abroad, my team and I developed a multi-pronged digital marketing strategy to reach members of the public in three European markets with educational, thought-provoking content in four languages. Though the campaign was only six months in duration, it proved that through authentic, human-centric storytelling, we could successfully raise public awareness of this key human rights issue, helping to counter mis- and disinformation that downplayed the severity of the crisis facing the Uyghur people.
The Challenge
Why would an average European citizen care about a message from a foreign government?
Public diplomacy campaigns are intended to promote mutual interests between countries by fostering shared values directly among regular citizens. Unlike propaganda, which uses biased or false information, often from misleading sources, to manipulate human behavior. Conversely, PD initiatives rely on transparency and factual information to persuade and influence audiences. But why would an average European citizen care about a message from a foreign government?​
Based on key informant interviews with a range of experts, we knew this was the core challenge of the campaign. Like most Americans, European audiences lacked baseline knowledge about the Uyghur community, let alone the persecution they face. Just teaching people how to say “Uyghur” (wee-gur) could be a standalone campaign. If this effort was going to succeed, our first task was to simply give audiences the opportunity to know more about who Uyghurs are. We reasoned that for the average European citizen care more about human rights abuses against Uyghurs, they first needed to know more about who they are.
The title of the podcast we promoted is a combination of English and Uyghur words meaning "we are together."
While this was the most fundamental challenge of the campaign, it certainly wasn’t the only obstacle we faced. In large part because this was the first PD campaign about Uyghur persecution, we had no blueprint for how to proceed, no approved content, no website to serve as a landing page for ad-driven traffic, and a limited budget and timeline. As we worked through logistics and explored the feasibility of various tactics, we faced reticence from both local and international media organizations to accept ads or publish sponsored content on this topic. Most importantly, we felt we had a moral imperative to avoid causing harm to this vulnerable community who were already experiencing profound trauma and to protect the Uyghur individuals who bravely contributed to this effort.
The Solution
Based on input from Uyghur advocates and other non-governmental organizations who had previously highlighted this issue, we believed that for a U.S.-backed campaign to be effective, it had to prioritize authenticity above all else. Instead of using American voices to speak on behalf of Uyghurs, we proposed a strategy that simply amplified real voices and stories from the Uyghur community – where possible, in their own words. In doing so, our goal was to help average Europeans see Uyghurs as more than just a faraway group with whom they had little in common, but as people who want the same things we all do – safety, prosperity, family, and respect.
Juggling a variety of constraints ranging from national security and diplomatic concerns to logistical issues, we ultimately settled on three core content pillars. Each pillar featured a different type of content, all promoted through paid placements on a range of digital platforms.
News-Style Content
Short educational articles published on the Department of State's Share America blog featured the work of Uyghur artists and authors, the experiences of survivors of persecution, and stories from the Uyghur diaspora in Europe.
Stories include:
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Persecuted at home, Uyghurs sustain their culture abroad (2021)
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​Uyghurs confront crisis through art (2022)
We promoted these pieces using social media ads via official U.S. embassy accounts to ensure full transparency.
Facebook ads ran under official U.S. embassy accounts to ensure transparency but didn't deter European readers from engaging.
Audiogram ads in French and English promoted listenership on platforms like Spotify where listeners could easily follow the podcast in just two clicks.
Podcast Promotion
Partnering with the creators of WEghur Stories, a podcast sponsored in part by the U.S. Embassy in Paris, our team promoted increased listenership via social media and ads on podcast platforms.
Because the first season of WEghur Stories was recorded in English, ads initially targeted English-speakers in our target markets. Later, when the episodes were reproduced in French, we launched a new ad flight reaching native French speakers in all markets.
​Original Video Series
In collaboration with a Uyghur filmmaker and advocate, the team produced a series of videos highlighting specific tactics used by the Chinese government to persecute and oppress Uyghurs in Xinjiang and beyond.
Entitled Hear Uyghur Voices, the series featured members of the Uyghur diaspora telling their personal stories – many speaking publicly for the first time and at great personal risk.
The series included the following short films:
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Family Separation: Due to government surveillance, many Uyghurs living abroad have not heard from their loved ones in China in years.
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Oppression & Surveillance: Uyghurs and other minorities know that at any time, they could be arbitrarily detained for violated rules meand to oppress their cultural identity.
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Forced Labor: Consumer goods like cotton, clothing, footwear, and electronics produced by Uyghur forced labor are pervasive in the global supply chain.
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Keeping Culture Alive: Uyghurs living in the diaspora have become keepers of their cultural identity including language, art, literature, food, and religion.
The videos were featured on a bespoke (temporary) website outside the .gov ecosystem to increase appeal with foreign audiences. We promoted website engagement with a range of digital ads, driving engagement with both ad creatives and the videos themselves.
While the Hear Uyghur Voices website has since been retired, the short films can be found on the Share America YouTube channel (first four on the playlist).
The Results
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Creating a landing page branded in alignment with the campaign vs. the U.S. government was a key strategy to improve relevance with forgeign audiences. The page was still clearly labled as paid for by DOS.
In the words of one collaborator, despite its short duration, the campaign helped to demonstrate that Uyghurs are, “more than the crisis happening in our community.” Key metrics also supported this assertion:
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Digital ads met or exceeded industry performance benchmarks, delivering more than 150 million impressions.
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The news-style articles had an average session time long enough to read most pieces in their entirety.
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WEghur Stories’ listenership jumped exponentially - our target markets made up three out of the top four countries by the end of the ad flight.
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Several Hear Uyghur Voices ad placements saw a remarkable click-through-rate of over 4%, driving over 20,000 views of the long-form videos, 35 million video ad views, and an engagement rate of 19.4% in less than one month.
I often say that this campaign was simultaneously the hardest and most rewarding thing I have done in my professional life. It tested my ability to balance the vision and authenticity with the necessary, albeit cumbersome, constraints associated with working on behalf of the U.S. government. Initially, the logistical challenges seemed insurmountable and the risks of a PD campaign on such a sensitive topic were high. But the result is a testament to the power of authentic, human-centered storytelling and what you can accomplish when you stay true to the vision.
Please Note: This campaign was executed under contract between the Department of State and DCG Communications, my previous consulting home. All strategies and materials developed as a part of this work are property of the U.S. government. The views and opinions expressed in this case study are my own and do not necessarily reflect the past or present perspective of the U.S. government.