Several major new developments as regards the ongoing Chinese genocide against the Uyghur people.
1) A major conference held in Newcastle, England was held 1-3 Sept, 2021, “The #Xinjiang Crisis: Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, Justice” – full set of session recordings now available as online videos, here. ( … my own paper, on the cultural destruction, was in panel 5).
2) The Uyghur Tribunal concluded its 2nd and final round of hearings in London September 10-13 and has also published the entire hearings online.
The Tribunal is a private pro-bono initiative to interview witnesses (survivors, experts, and more) and accumulate documentation, as an encouragement to world governments who have largely failed to go from expressing “concern” to action against China. The tribunal will publish its conclusions in December. A summary report on the tribunal (and China’s government lashing out against it) is here.
3) Meanwhile, right at the same time, the UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet released a momentous 2 sentences statement declaring that (after 4 years of trying), she is giving up on her efforts to send an inspection team to China.
At Monday’s opening of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Michelle Bachelet said: “I regret that I am not able to report progress on my efforts to seek meaningful access to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. In the meantime, my Office is finalising its assessment of the available information on allegations of serious human rights violations in that region, with a view to making it public.” This will now be eagerly awaited.
There was of course never any chance that the Chinese government would allow meaningful access for UN officials — instead, they would be subjected to the same staging and fakery that the Chinese government has produced since 2018, to try to mislead outsiders about the true nature and extent of the atrocities they are perpetrating. For more click here.
4) Meanwhile the European Parliament has released an elaborate new report recommending European Union policies towards China, in the light of, not least, China’s sanctions against European parliamentarians, academics and research institutes. The recommendations include urging Michelle Bachelet to launch her own independent investigations (and not wait for the requested visit that never materialized … despite the four wasted years of negotiations).
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has promised the European Union, like the US, will block imports of slave labor products from China — one of the recommendations of Parliament.
However, because of the duplicity of the Chinese authorities, it’s unclear whether such action can work unless taking the form of blocking all commerce from the region of the genocide, as in the new U.S. law that just passed the U.S. Senate. For more on this click here.
For more updates see the UHRP bibliography.
Yrs,
Magnus Fiskesjö, nf42@cornell.edu