A roundup of Uyghur-related news around the world
A Kazakh woman in Xinjiang asked journalists to publicize her case
A Kazakh female dissident freed from a Chinese internment camp to her home in Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang, spoke to journalists and activists in the United States, asking them to publicize her plea to leave in China. After Zhanargul Zhumatai’s words “Help Me, I Just Want To Leave China” were publicized in the international media, the Chinese authorities agreed to give him a passport to go to Kazakhstan where the authority to receive him. But his fate is still unknown.
Xinjiang Victims Database: repression of Uyghurs in China does not change
Gene Bunin, founder of the Xinjiang Victims Database, which documents victims of China’s repressive policies in Xinjiang, said the protests that began in November in Urumqi and later spread to other Chinese cities are likely to did not unite with the Uyghurs and is more likely the result of a failure of China’s zero-COVID policy.
The Uyghur engineer urged China to release his 19-year-old sister from prison
Kewser Wayit, a Uyghur engineer based in the US, is calling on the Chinese government to release his 19-year-old sister detained by Chinese authorities in Xinjiang for posting a video about “white paper” protests in China.
Uyghurs in Washington urge international community to recognize Xinjiang as ‘occupied’
January 19 marks two years since the US officially recognized China’s mistreatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim populations in Xinjiang as genocide. In commemoration of the second anniversary of the US official designation of the Uyghur genocide, two Washington-based pro-independence Uyghur organizations, East Turkistan Government in Exile and East Turkistan National Movement, held a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington and issued a white paper disputing China’s claims that Xinjiang has been part of China since ancient times.
At Thursday’s event, the groups released a 12-page brief arguing that achieving East Turkistan’s independence from China is necessary to end genocide in the region and ensure basic Uyghur freedoms, human rights, and safety. , Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic ethnicities.
New in a nutshell
A Uyghur couple with Chinese citizenship faces the threat of deportation from Malta
On January 16, the European Court of Human Rights ordered the Republic of Malta to halt a planned deportation of a Uyghur couple with Chinese citizenship to China after two human rights organizations, the Malta-based Aditus Foundation and the Spanish human rights group, Safeguard Defenders. , on January 13 filed a case at the European Court of Human Rights against the Maltese immigration authorities, condemning their ‘rejection of the appeal of two Uyghurs’ for humanitarian protection.
According to the Aditus Foundation, the Uyghurs arrived in Malta in 2016 and spent years living in hiding in the Mediterranean island state when authorities first rejected their application for asylum in 2017. In 2018, Malta issued orders to remove them from the country.
Note quote
“Trying to reason logically: Much worse has happened in Xinjiang in the last five years, without any protests having followed, so it is unlikely that these protests are in solidarity and more likely that they are the result of pent-up frustration at zero. -policy of COVID. The fact that the protests disappeared so quickly, while the main issues in Xinjiang remain, would also lead me to assume that Uyghur/Xinjiang unity is not an important element here, although there are certain pockets of Han population who are unhappy with Xinjiang’s policies and will certainly speak out against them if it is safe to do so.”
– Gene Bunin, founder of the Xinjiang Victims Database.
