Press Release – For immediate release
31 January 2018
Contact: World Uyghur Congress www.uyghurcongress.org
0049 (0) 89 5432 1999 or [email protected]

The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) under the co-sponsorship of the Norwegian Uyghur Committee and the Rafto Foundation, and with support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) will convene a youth training seminar that will take place in Oslo, Norway, from March 16 -18, 2018.

The training will be preceded by a conference and roundtable discussion on Uyghur cultural rights and China’s campaign of assimilation.  The conference will be held on March 16^th and will bring together Uyghur community leaders, human rights activists and academics to present and discuss important topics related to the central theme, such as the ban on the Uyghur language in schools in the Hotan prefecture and the increasing restrictions on freedom of religion in East Turkestan.

The youth training seminar will begin shortly after the conference and continue over the weekend. This will mark the 14th training session organized by the WUC as we have proudly held workshops each year since 2007 in cities as far as Sydney, Washington, Tokyo, Stockholm, Brussels, Berlin, Geneva and the Hague.

Building on the training workshops conducted by the World Uyghur Congress in the past, this year’s training will focus on providing the Uyghur youth community in Norway with the skills, knowledge and capacity to engage in human rights advocacy on Uyghur-related issues at the local and national level, in their own communities and with regional civil society groups.

While the training will focus primarily on providing concrete and practical ways Uyghur youth can engage in human rights advocacy in their communities, participants will also be briefed on the role and components of UN and EU human rights mechanisms as well as the role of international law more broadly.

The training seminar will provide the participants with opportunities for Uyghurs to meet and speak to one another and to build a network of likeminded individuals for future advocacy activities.

Past seminars have focused on highlighting many of the current and persistent problems Uyghurs consistently face in East Turkestan so that participants are able to develop a context-specific approach to possible solutions. This training seminar will build on the conference on cultural rights and assimilation, to focus on and discuss these two critical issues further.

Further details will be provided as the event approaches.