Weekly Brief – June 22nd
World Uyghur Congress, 22 June 2018
WUC Calls on the International Community to Protect Uyghur Refugees on World Refugee Day
On June 20th, the WUC issued a press release highlighting the plight of Uyghur refugees and calling on the international community to protect them, marking World Refugee Day.
In recent years, tens of thousands of Uyghurs have fled persecution by the Chinese government in East Turkistan as refugees and asylum seekers. After an often difficult and dangerous journey, many Uyghurs have been granted refuge in countries across the world, where they are active and contributing members of society.
However, they face a very difficult situation, cut off from their homeland, culture, family and friends. This has been exacerbated in the past year by efforts from the Chinese government to cut off all forms of communication between the Uyghur diaspora and those still living in East Turkistan. Starting in April 2017, many Uyghurs living outside East Turkistan lost all contact with their friends and loved ones and have not heard from them since.
The situation is even worse for Uyghur refugees who are unable to make it to a safe host country. The Chinese government has relentlessly pursued Uyghur refugees, pressuring other governments to forcibly return these individuals.
In the past 15 years, at least 300 Uyghurs have been forcibly returned to China from 16 different countries. These individuals were students, refugees and asylum seekers.
Amnesty International Calls for Urgent Action on the Case of Disappeared Uyghur Student, Guligeina Tashimaimaiti
Amnesty International has issued an Urgent Action on the case of Guligeina Tashimaimaiti, a Uyghur PhD student studying in Malaysia who disappeared after visiting family in East Turkistan. She returned home after being unable to contact her family members for an extended period of time. She disappeared on 26 December 2017 and has not been heard from since, but it is assumed that she has been arbitrarily detained in a political indoctrination camp and may have been subjected to torture.
Amnesty has launched a letter writing campaign asking the Chinese government to:
1. Release Guligeina Tashimaimaiti and drop any charges against her unless there is sufficient credible and admissible evidence that she has committed an internationally recognized offence and is granted a fair trial in line with international standards;
2. Ensure that Guligeina Tashimaimaiti has regular, unrestricted access to a lawyer of her choice and her family and is not subjected to torture or other ill-treatment;
3. Ensure that everybody in the XUAR is able to communicate with family members and others, including with family members living in other countries, without interference unless justified in line with international human rights law.
The Uyghur Friendship Group in the European Parliament and EPP Group Convene European Parliament Conference on Human Rights Situation of Uyghurs
On 26 June 2018, from 12:30 to 14:30, the Uyghur Friendship Group in collaboration with the European People’s Party (EPP) will convene its very first meeting since its constitution. Entitled “A People Under Threat: Hundreds of Thousands of Uyghurs Arbitrarily Detained in China”, the high-level event will take place in room 2Q2, inside the European Parliament. By organising this conference, Members of the European Parliament (MEP) who are part of the Uyghur Friendship Group seek to bring to the attention of the international community the worrying developments currently occurring in the so-called Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Focusing in particular on the alarming situation in the region’s “re-education” camps as, the conference will also serve as an occasion to discuss immediate and – crucially – substantive action that the Group could take to put this issue not only on the EU’s agenda, but also raise it internationally.
To register for the event, please fill out this form.
John Oliver Raises Mass Arbitrary Detention of Uyghurs on Last Week Tonight
On Sunday, June 17th, comedian and TV host, John Oliver, raised the issue of China’s severe repression and the mass arbitrary detention of Uyghurs in political indoctrination camps on a segment on China’s President Xi Jinping in his TV program ‘Last Week Tonight’ on HBO. The segment took a satirical look at Xi Jinping’s increasingly repressive rule and made reference to his resemblance to Winnie the Pooh.
In response the Chinese government has banned ‘Last Week Tonight’ in China and has censored any reference to John Oliver on Chinese social media.
WUC Calls for States to Raise Mass Arbitrary Detention of Uyghurs During 38th Session of UN Human Rights Council
The WUC has joined other voices, including notable Australian academic James Leibold, in calling on UN Member States to raise China’s severe human rights violations, especially the mass arbitrary detention of Uyghurs in political indoctrination camps, during the 38th session of the UN Human Rights Council. James Leipold wrote an article in The Interpreter calling on Australia, his home country, to publicly raise this issue. Despite attempts to highlight this situation by the Uyghur community, academics and the international media, states have remained largely silent on the issue, with Canada being the only country to raise the camps in the HRC before this session.
Another concerning development has been the decision of the United States to leave the UN Human Rights Council. The WUC and other human rights organisations expressed their concerns that the US’s decision will embolden authoritarian governments, especially China, to further undermine the concept of human rights and silence civil society.