In March, HRF’s Chinese Communist Party Disruption Initiative (CCPDI) hosted our first in-person activist retreat, “Beyond Borders: Youth Resilience Against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” a three-day gathering designed to equip young diaspora leaders with cross-disciplinary skills to understand, withstand, and counter the impact of the CCP’s transnational repression.
The CCP operates the world’s most sophisticated and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression, which aims to weaken advocacy efforts, erode social trust, fracture coalitions, instill fear among communities, and produce sustained psychological harm.
This gathering is our antidote — bringing activists together and solidifying the bonds that the CCP so desperately wants to break.
This activist retreat was designed to inspire collective power, with the hope that the next generation of freedom advocates can come together in a safe space to reconnect, recharge, and reimagine what peaceful resistance can look like.
Our Participants
The gathering brought together a cohort of 30 rising human rights activists from the Uyghur, Hong Kong, Tibetan, Chinese, and Southern Mongolian diasporas, as well as Taiwan. They have all been directly targeted by the CCP’s transnational repression. Aged 18 to 30, participants included:
- A Chinese human rights activist who participated in the 2022 White Paper Protests who has been detained multiple times in China for her peaceful activism.
- A New York-based Uyghur artist and activist, who was born in the Uyghur Region and was forced to flee at the age of seven due to his father’s writing on Uyghur history.
- A London-based Tibetan activist, whose advocacy includes writing about firsthand encounters that shaped his understanding of Tibetan national identity under Chinese occupation.
- A Hong Kong activist and community organizer affiliated with the European Hong Kong Diaspora Alliance, who engages in creative expression to explore identity, displacement, and belonging.
- A US-born Southern Mongolian human rights activist and emerging voice on the CCP’s ongoing efforts to erode the language, culture, and rights of her ancestral homeland (China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, referred to as Southern Mongolia, by the diaspora).
- The president of the Uyghur American Association, dedicated to raising public awareness about Uyghur human rights and culture.
- A Taiwanese youth civic leader on the front lines of resisting the CCP’s expansion and standing in solidarity with exiled diaspora communities in Taiwan.
Program Sessions and Highlights
Our programming featured six sessions led by expert facilitators:
- AI as a Tool: Led by China Strategy Risks Institute researcher Athena Tong, this session examined how authoritarian regimes weaponize AI to monitor, censor, and repress dissent.
- Artistic Resilience: Kicking off with an HRF-moderated panel featuring Hong Kong multidisciplinary artist Loretta Lau and Taiwan’s Ambassador to Finland Freddy Lim, followed by closed-door breakout groups, participants explored how art can help activists to creatively express their movements.
- Digital Protection: Led by digital security expert Sarah Moulton, this session featured CyberSim, an interactive simulation game where participants practiced responding to digital attacks.
- Legal Pathways: Laura Harth from Safeguard Defenders guided activists on how to mitigate potential scenarios of transnational repression and build action plans to document and address these threats.
- Physical Protection: Tibetan activist and former HRF Freedom Fellow Pema Doma provided the activists with practical approaches to execute security plans for protests and other in-person gatherings.
- Psychological Resilience: HRF’s Mental Health Mentor Vanina Waizmann equipped our cohort with grounding techniques and best practices for embodied self-care.
Other highlights included:
- A screening of the Tibetan film “State of Statelessness” followed by an intimate panel and cross-movement discussion on the emotional toll of living in exile.
- A graffiti workshop where our cohort turned blank walls into vibrant canvases, using creativity to express their hopes for a democratic future.
Drawn by a Chinese activist, the line “The Last Generation” channels the outrage that bubbled in China during the 2022 White Paper Protests, expressing hope that “[the CCP’s] atrocities will end this lifetime, and that the next generation will live in freedom.”
- Taiwan’s Ambassador to the EU, Dr. Shieh Jhy-Wey, and Taiwan’s Ambassador to Finland, Freddy Lim, shared heartfelt remarks at our closing dinner on the importance of building coalitions and solidarity between communities targeted by the CCP.
- Inspired by our retreat, one of our participants created a mix with soundbites from other participants calling for a “Free Tibet” to “Free East Turkestan” and more. Listen here.
Testimonies
“These types of workshops give us experiences that we hold on to for the rest of our lives. Thank you for making this possible and all your hard work organizing something this vast.”
“I’m truly grateful for the opportunity to be here. I sincerely appreciate this experience—not only for what I learned, but more importantly for the people I met. We built strong connections and a supportive network that we can rely on in the future.”
“These types of gatherings with other Uyghurs and broader communities have changed my life… It helps to motivate me, inspire me, and to see the potential impacts of my presence in these movements. What I do is bigger than just me.”
“Thank you everyone for a truly unforgettable week. I felt so seen, heard, understood and held by you all. I’m so inspired by all of your work and can’t wait till our paths cross again!”
Next Steps
In the coming months, our team will publish a comprehensive resilience toolkit and two policy briefs based on learnings from this retreat to create a durable set of resilience strategies that activists can bring back to their communities to empower the wider diaspora ecosystem.
HRF welcomes all to join us in lifting the brave voices of the next generation for freedom.
Thank you. 謝謝. ཐུགས་རྗེ་ཆེ. رەھمەت
For freedom,
HRF’s CCPDI Team
HRF’s “Beyond Borders: Youth Resilience Against the CCP” was graciously sponsored by the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy and the Atlas Network.
The Chinese Communist Party Disruption Initiative (CCPDI) aims to expose how the CCP’s global influence threatens human rights and freedoms worldwide.
The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies.
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