World Uyghur Congress, 8 November 2019

Join Us For A Festival of Uyghur Culture and Democracy in Munich!

On November 9, 2019, the World Uyghur Congress in cooperation with the East Turkistan Union in Europe, the Uyghur Mothers in Germany, the Uyghur Women Association Arzu and the Ilham Tohti Initiative will hold a cultural event at Max-Joseph-Platz from 13:00-17:00 in Munich, Germany.

The festival commemorates the founding of the two East Turkistan Republics in 1933 and 1944. The event is open to the general public and is supported by the Migrationsbeirat and the Kulturreferat of the city of Munich.

WUC Saddened By Passing of Tibetan Activist Ngawang Choephel

The WUC expresses its condolences to family and friends following the passing of long-time Tibetan activist, Ngawang Choephel, this week in Geneva. Choephel was a pivotal figure for the Tibetan community and worked for years in conjunction with the Uyghur community in Europe and elsewhere.Choephel worked closely with the World Uyghur Congress through his work with the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, which he stood as President for a number of years.

China Appoints Controversial EU Special Envoy

In a move to lobby for increased China-Europe economic ties, China appointed its first-ever special envoy to the EU on November 1. The diplomat assigned to the post, Mr. Wu Hongbo, admitted in April 2019 on Chinese state television to having abused his post as UN Under-Secretary-General and Head of UNDESA to impose Chinese interests on the United Nations by expelling without grounds WUC President, Dolkun Isa, from the 2017 UN Indigenous Forum.

Communist Party Assigns Male Han-Chinese to “Co-Sleep” with Uyghur Women

As part of a Chinese Communist Party forced stayover campaign, which has party cadres and Han-Chinese civilians stay for periods of around one week with Uyghur families to observe and publicize their lives, the “Pair Up and Become Family” program is now going one step further. Male Han Chinese sent on these intrusive home visits have been reported to regularly sleep in the same beds as the wives of men detained in the region’s internment camps.

In 2014, the Chinese government started a campaign dispatching 200,000 Party members to stay in Uyghur villages. In 2016, a second wave of 110,000 civil servants were sent into Uyghur villages as part of the “United as One Family” campaign, which focused on placing “relatives” in Uyghurs homes whose family members had been imprisoned or killed by the police. In 2017, a third wave of visits began, which assigned more than one million civilians to Muslim “relatives”. Every two months, a group of government officials visits the same family in East Turkistan for a period of between five and eight days. The new program can be seen as the next wave of intrusive home visits designed to totally assimilate Uyghur culture and identity and to control the Uyghur population.