BHRC has issued a public statement welcoming two recent developments in the international community condemning the treatment of Uighur peoples in Xingiang.
It is estimated that over 1 million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims are being detained in “political education camps”, with millions more subject to restrictions on their liberty. BHRC is deeply concerned that lawyers in China are being systematically prevented – by arrest, prosecution for sedition and disbarment – from challenging unlawful acts against those detained including forced political indoctrination, forced renunciation of their faith, mistreatment and torture.
The two developments are:
First, the joint statement of the UK and 22 other countries made at the Third Committee session on the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) on 29 October 2019.
Second, the US Commerce Department’s announcement that it will place 28 Chinese public security bureaus and companies on a US trade blacklist.
BHRC encourages further States, UN agencies and international institutions to consider what steps they could take to bring about an end to the human rights violations and other unlawful treatment of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in China and to thereby reinforce the Joint Statement before the CERD and the US trade blacklist.
Read the statement in full here.
