Press Release – For immediate release
27 May 2020
Contact: World Uyghur Congress www.uyghurcongress.org
+49 89 5432 1999 or [email protected]

The WUC is calling on U.S. President Donald Trump to urgently sign the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act into law after it overwhelming was approved by the House of Representatives today. After the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act was passed by the Senate earlier this month, the House of Representatives were required to vote again on the act to send it to the desk of the U.S. President. The WUC and the Uyghur community are grateful to the Congressmen who dealt swiftly in approving this act and eagerly await its signature into law.

The WUC deeply appreciates the US Congress for addressing the passage of the act with an appropriate level of urgency, which has seen both chambers vote this month. The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act and other legislation addressing the crimes against humanity being perpetrated against the Uyghur people had been tabled and considered in the U.S. Congress for months, but various obstacles had prevented its quick adoption. These recent developments have shown a renewed resolve from the U.S. government to take urgent, meaningful and sustained action to address the crisis in East Turkistan, that the act provides for. Once this bill is signed into law, it will constitute the first legislative initiative by a national government to address the Uyghur crisis. The bipartisan support for the act evidenced by these recent steps gives hope to the Uyghur people and a mandate for the U.S. to implement the provisions of the act as a matter of priority.

For three years, Uyghurs around the world have been called for the international community to take concrete measures to stop the Chinese government’s atrocities against the Uyghur people. As the friends and families of the Uyghur diaspora have been rounded up and arbitrarily detained in internment camps or disappeared, Uyghur activists in the U.S. and around the world have urged the international community and national governments to do something to end their suffering. 

“We urge President Trump to sign the Uyghur Human Rights Policy into law as a matter of priority and take immediate steps to implement it,” WUC President Dolkun Isa stated. “Our community needs the U.S. government and governments around the world to take real, meaningful action, as is provided for in this act. After years of suffering and frustration, the Uyghur people need hope.”

The WUC hopes the Act stands as an example to governments around the world of the type of proactive and substantive measures necessary to bring an end to the atrocities being committed by the Chinese government in East Turkistan. We must build on the momentum generated by the passage of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act and call on parliamentarians around the world to pass similar legislative initiatives in their own national contexts. The concern and condemnation of the Chinese government’s treatment of the Uyghur people, expressed by national governments around the world, must be converted into meaningful action, if the situation in East Turkistan is to change.