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Weekly Brief October 13th

Weekly Brief October 13th

World Uyghur Congress, 13 October 2017

WUC Holds Human Rights Advocacy Training Seminar in Sweden

Starting Friday, 13 October 2017, the World Uyghur Congress is holding a 3 day Human Rights Advocacy Training Seminar for Uyghur youth in Stockholm, Sweden, in partnership with the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) and the Sweden Uyghur Education Union.

The workshop will bring together more than 50 interested Uyghur participants and will focus on improving their capacity to engage in human rights advocacy on Uyghur issues at the local and national level. It will provide participants with practical strategies to engage on issues important to Uyghurs including the practice of human rights advocacy in the Swedish context and the use of social media and other online tools in that pursuit.

Uyghur diaspora leaders, human rights activists, intellectuals, Uyghur community leaders and the Uyghur youth in Sweden will all be present to provide a supportive environment for the exchange of ideas and strategies from past successes and means for engaging effectively in the future.

High Numbers of Uyghurs Targeted for Re-education Camps in Hotan Prefecture

It was reported this week that officials in the Hotan prefecture in East Turkestan were ordered to send high numbers of Uyghurs to re-education camps, nearly half of all Uyghurs in the Hotan prefecture. The orders reportedly came from high up in the Chinese government, as officials in the Hotan prefecture were ordered to send a ‘percentage’ of Uyghurs for re-education. This measure appears to be the latest attempt by the Chinese authorities to assimilate the Uyghur population.

Uyghurs in Aksu Prefecture Required to Get Barcodes on All Knives

A new ‘security’ policy from Chinese authorities in the Aksu prefecture in East Turkestan reportedly requires that all knives owned by Uyghurs be affixed with a QR identification code. The new policy was designed to be able to track who purchased a knife if it was used in a violent act, but many Uyghurs see it as a further attempt by the Chinese government to control and regulation every aspect of their lives, now requiring them to register cutlery.