Wed 01 September 2021:
Leading academics and attorneys will gather in the United Kingdom on Wednesday for the first large-scale conference to discuss the Chinese government’s alleged genocide of the Uyghur ethnic community in the northwest Xinjiang province.
The three-day conference at Newcastle University features dozens of speakers, including leading British judges and legislators, and is the first to bring together such a large number of experts on Xinjiang and genocide.
It’s the latest effort to hold China accountable for alleged human rights violations against Uyghurs and other Muslim and Turkic minorities.
Speakers will address evidence of alleged Uyghur atrocities, such as forced labor, forced birth control, and religious oppression, as well as strategies to demand international action to stop the abuse.
“We want it to not just be a scholarly affair — we are gathering all these people to combine their expertise and influence to up the ante, to increase pressure on China, to think of ways to bring an end to the harm on the Uyghur people,” said organizer Jo Smith Finley, an academic specializing in Uyghur studies.
“This is a major humanitarian disaster which is increasingly urgent,” she added. “Is this genocide or cultural genocide, or crimes against humanity, and how can we prosecute that? We are really trying to refocus on what can we do to make this stop.”
Academic Adrian Zenz, whose research on forced sterilizations among Uyghur women drew widespread attention to the issue, will present official documents backing claims that Beijing wants to forcibly reduce the Uyghur population, Finley said.
According to researchers, more over a million people, mostly Uyghurs, have been incarcerated in massive re-education camps in Xinjiang in recent years. Chinese officials have been accused of enforcing forced labor, forced birth control, and torture, as well as erasing the Uyghurs’ cultural and religious identities and separating children from their jailed parents.
Finley, the conference organizer, was one of several British citizens sanctioned by China and barred from entering the country early this year because of her efforts.
One of the conference’s key goals is to see if diplomatic efforts, such as a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, may be helpful in bringing China to heel.
“There’s a lot we can do in terms of shaming,” Finley said.
The conference runs until Friday and will be livestreamed online.
(Input with agency)
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