UK meet to discuss China’s Uighur genocide

London, Sep. 1: Leading scholars and lawyers are joining politicians and human rights groups in Britain on Wednesday for the first large-scale conference to discuss the Chinese government’s alleged genocide against the Uighur ethnic group in the northwest Xinjiang region.

The three-day conference at Newcastle University brings together dozens of speakers, including senior British judges and lawmakers, and is the first to gather so many experts on Xinjiang and genocide. It is the latest move aiming to hold China accountable for alleged rights abuses against the Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim and Turkish minorities. Speakers will cover evidence of alleged atrocities targeting the Uighurs, including forced labour, forced birth control and religious suppression, and discuss ways to compel international action to stop the alleged 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 Uighurs,” said organiser Jo Smith Finley, an academic specialising in Uighur 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 sterilisations among Uighur women drew widespread attention to the issue, will present official documents backing claims that Beijing wants to forcibly reduce the Uighur population, Finley said.

Researchers say an estimated one million people or more — most of them Uighurs — have been confined in vast re-education camps in Xinjiang in recent years. Chinese authorities have been accused of imposing forced labour, systematic forced birth control and torture, erasing the Uighurs’ cultural and religious identity, and separating children from incarcerated parents.

Chinese officials have rejected the genocide and rights abuse allegations as groundless and characterised the camps as vocational training centres to teach Chinese, job skills and the law to support economic development and combat radicalism.

CHINESE OFFICIALS have rejected the genocide and rights abuse allegations as groundless and characterised the camps as vocational training centres.