Weekly Brief October 12
World Uyghur Congress, 12 October 2018
WUC Welcomes the release of Uyghur Asylum Seekers from Malaysia
This week, the World Uyghur Congress issued a press release welcoming the recent release of 11 Uyghur asylum seekers in Malaysia to a safe third country after nearly five years of being detained without charge in immigration detention facilities in Thailand and Malaysia.
The recent decision comes after years of purposeful indecision from Thai and Malaysian authorities, who had been under obligation to promptly deal with their cases.
The 11 men were originally part of a larger group who joined together in Southeast Asia after fleeing separately from East Turkistan in 2013 and 2014. The 11 were held in Thailand since early 2014 in various facilities until a desperate escape in November 2017 where they tunnelled through a wall and scaled the building using bedsheets.
Uyghur Congress President Dolkun Isa said in response to the recent news, “Although the result is encouraging, we remain deeply disappointed that the Thai and Malaysian authorities dragged their feet for so many years.”
The Uyghur Congress continues to work on countless Uyghur asylum cases in 2018, given the unparalleled situation facing Uyghurs in East Turkistan, many of who have been arbitrarily detained in political indoctrination camps for their travel abroad.
The rest of the international community must follow the recent lead of Germany and Sweden in halting all deportations of Uyghurs to China given the conditions in the region today.
Joint Press Release to Call Norwegian Government to Raise the Camp Issue with China
The Norwegian Uyghur Committee NUK – NUK – Den Norske Uighurkomiteen and the World Uyghur Congress have issued a joint press release calling on the Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide and the Norwegian Government as a whole to publicly raise the mass arbitrary detention of Uyghurs in internment camps with their Chinese counterparts during their official visit to China.
China must know the world is watching what is happening to the Uyghurpeople and will not sit idly by while an entire people and culture is at risk. The Uyghur people are looking to Norway for support and to hold China accountable for these massive human rights violations
WUC Announces Large-Scale March and Demonstration on November 6th In Geneva
This week the World Uyghur Congress issued a press release to announce that the ‘Uyghur March for Freedom’ will take place on November 6th in Geneva, Switzerland, at the UN Palais des Nations to protest against the mass arbitrary detention of Uyghurs in internment camps and other serious human rights violations in China.
At the start of China’s UN Universal Periodic Review of its human rights record, thousands of Uyghurs and other individuals concerned with human rights in China will hold a large-scale march and demonstration in Geneva, Switzerland.
China’s UPR is a very important occasion to highlight the current human rights crisis in China. Momentum has been building is recent months and the UPR of China presents an important occasion to put China’s serious human rights violations on the center stage.
Now is the time for states to speak up for human rights and human dignity in China. It cannot wait. The fate of the Uyghur people and all those who long for human rights in China is at stake.
China Amends Law In Effort To Legitimize Internment Camps
After continually denying the existence of the internment camps in East Turkistan, China is attempting to legitimise the camps where over one million Uyghurs are arbitrarily detained according to a Radio Free Asia report.
On Tuesday 9th October, the Chinese government unveiled new clauses added to an anti-extremism law put into effect in March 2017 to cover what China calls vocational training centres for Uyghurs—but which former guards and inmates describe as detention camps now estimated to hold 10 percent of all Uyghurs. The revisions make no reference to the arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance of the over 1 million Uyghurs, which remains illegal according to China’s own laws.
Beijing, which initially denied the existence of such camps, now says they are part of the fight against extremism and also work to provide Uyghurs vocational training. China’s shifting narrative of the camps may show that it is reacting to international pressure and now feels to need to justify and hide these horrific practices.
Detailed Report On WUC President Dolkun Isa
Ty Joplin from Al Bawaba News wrote a great article titles as “China’s War On Islam: Dolkun Isa Escaped Xinjiang and Interpol to Defend Uyghur Existence” gives detailed report on the World Uyghur Congress president Mr. Isa’s life, the current crisis in East Turkistan and how China’s attempts to assimilate Uyghurs galvanised the community.
The article asserts: “Simply living as a Uyghur is now a form of political resistance”.
“The decades-long project of assimilating Uyghurs into a Han Chinese identity has actually explicated those ethnic differences it has sought to eliminate. By targeting mosques, Qurans and the Uyghur language, they have become as politically strategic as they are culturally precious.”
Mr.Isa and the World Uyghur Congress have been at the forefront of the resistant towards China’s harsh crackdown on Uyghur Muslims.
U.S To Introduce Uyghur Human Rights Bill In Congress
The Chairs of the Congressional Executive Commission on China Senator Marco Rubio and a bipartisan group of 13 other U.S, Senators introduced the Uyghur Human Rights Act 2018 at the US Congress.
This marks as an important step to formalising the U.S’s position and hold China accountable for human rights violations.
Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Chris Smith also have announced their intention to nominate prominent Uyghur activist Ilham Tohti for the 2019 Nobel Prize during a press conference as the CECC released its annual report on the human rights situation in China.