Uighurs

Bearing an Olympic Torch, and a Politically Loaded MessageFor China, a Uyghur lighting the cauldron was a feel-good moment of ethnic unity. Western critics saw a cynical bid to whitewash human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

LEARN & TAKE ACTION - You will find information concerning the Uyghur Genocide on our 2021 website History Unfolding.

You can also read then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's official determination by the United States that China was committing genocide against Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province.

UPDATES SINCE LAST YEAR - President Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act  into law in December 2021 as a means to address the ongoing genocide in China's Xinjiang Province.

Survivor Profile: Zohre Talip

Zohre Talip is a member of the Uighur minority in China’s Xinjiang Province, caught up in what many are calling a “cultural genocide,” an attempt to get rid of Uighur language, their Muslim religious practices, and even their history. Zohre grew up poor, the eldest daughter of a shepherd, but she went to university, studied journalism, and rose in her career to be editor-in-chief of a Uighur newspaper, and eventually she became an official in the Communist Party. She married and had two daughters. In October 2018, she inexplicably disappeared for four months; her daughters realized she had been taken to one of nearly 100 internment camps. According to the New York Times, “[T]he million or more Uighurs, Kazakhs and other minorities sent to the camps are virtual prisoners, unable to leave or to appeal against their detention, and the plans to assign them to work in factories amount to forced labor.” source: The New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/magazine/uyghur-muslims-china.html