Date: Friday, August 16, 2024

Time: 10:00–11:00 a.m. EDT

Watch live on UHRP’s Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube pages

Please join the Uyghur Human Rights Project for a book discussion highlighting the critical role Uyghur women in diaspora play in bringing attention to genocide.

The book, Uyghur Women Activists in the Diaspora: Restorying a Genocide, by Susan J. Palmer, Dilmurat Mahmut, and Abdulmuqtedir Udun, is the first book to specifically highlight the exceptional role of Uyghur women in the Uyghur freedom movement.

Our event will feature Dr. Susan J. Palmer, an academic and one of the authors of the book as well as three women featured in the book: Dr. Raziya Mahmut, a Scientist and an Uyghur activist, Ms. Gulchehra Hoja, an Uyghur journalist, and Ms. Zubayra Shamseden, Chinese Outreach Coordinator of UHRP and elected vice president of World Uyghur Congress. The event will be moderated by Dr. Sophie Richardson, a longtime activist and scholar of Chinese politics, human rights, and foreign policy.

Speakers:

Susan J. Palmer is an Affiliate Professor and Lecturer at Concordia University. She is also a Lecturer at the Religious Studies Faculty at McGill University where she directed two research projects funded by the Social Sciences in the Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), which since 1986 has funded her research in the field of new religious movements.

Palmer’s most recent book, co-authored with Dilmurat Mahmut and Abdulmuqtedir Udun, is Uyghur Women Activists in the Diaspora: Restorying a Genocide (Bloomsbury 2024). She is also the author, co-author, or editor of twelve sociological studies of new religious movements, notably: The New Heretics of France (Oxford University Press 2011); Aliens Adored: Rael’s New Religion (Rutgers 2004); Moon Sisters, Krishna Mothers, Rajneesh Lovers (Syracuse, 1994); and Storming Zion: Government Raids on Religious Communities (Oxford 2015), co-authored with Stuart Wright. Her next volume, Hiding from Herod: Chidren in Sectarian Religions and State Control, is forthcoming with New York University Press.

Dr. Raziya Mahmut is a prominent human rights activist and advocate for the Uyghurcommunity. She was born in East Turkestan (Aka Xinjiang). She left China on a student visa and moved to Canada, where she currently resides. Raziya Mahmut earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Mainland China, followed by a Master’s degree in Molecular Biology from Belgium. Raziya further advanced her expertise by obtaining a second Master’s degree in Veterinary Science from Canada, and she completed her academic journey with a Ph.D. in Biology from Canada.

Raziya Mahmut is actively involved in various organizations and initiatives that focus on raising awareness about the Uyghur situation and supporting Uyghurs both within Canada and globally. She serves as the communication director in the Uyghur Academy of Canada (UAC), an organization dedicated to promoting Uyghur culture, language, and rights in Canada. Raziya is a board member of the East Turkistan Association of Canada, an organization that represents the interests of the Uyghur community in Canada. She is also a member of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), an international organization that advocates for the rights and freedom of Uyghurs. Currently, she works as a Biological Scientist for the Government of Canada.

Gulchehra A. Hoja is an Uyghur American journalist, who has worked for Radio Free Asia since 2001.In November 2019, Hoja received the Magnitsky Human Rights Award for her reporting onthe ongoing human rights crisis in Xinjiang (East Turkestan) and in 2020, Hoja received the Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation and been listed among the 500 Most Influential Muslims.

Her career in journalism started at China’s state-run Xinjiang TV, and she became well known by Uyghurs and recognized on Chinese TV, commercials, music videos, and movies. Soon after she join the Radio Free Asia in the United States China banned all her previous recordings in China. Her reporting on the situation in Xinjiang for Radio Free Asia – which led to the incarceration of her entire extended family in -2018.

Her memoir, A Stone is Most Precious Where it Belongs, published by‎ Hachette Books February 21, 2023, was named a best book of the year 2023 by the New Yorker Women’s National Book Association 2023 Great Group Read.

Zubayra Shamseden is the Chinese Outreach Coordinator at the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP). She has been campaigning for the human rights and political freedom of the Uyghur people since the late 1980s. Before joining UHRP, Shamseden worked as an Information Officer, Researcher, and Translator at the International Uyghur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation (IUHRDF). She has worked in multicultural education and community liaison for nonprofit, academic, and government organizations in Australia and the U.S. for over two decades. Shamseden is a 2016-2018 Fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement’s (IGE) Center for Women, Faith & Leadership (CWFL). She has a Bachelor’s degree in Library and Information Science from East China Normal University in Shanghai, a certification in Chinese from the Industrial University of Xinjiang, a diploma in Russian language and literature from the State University of Eastern Kazakhstan, and a graduate diploma in Information Studies and a Master’s degree in International Studies from the University of South Australia, where she focused on the modern history of Uyghur human rights.

Moderator:

Dr. Sophie Richardson is a longtime activist and scholar of Chinese politics, human rights, and foreign policy.  From 2006 to 2023, she served as the China Director at Human Rights Watch, where she oversaw the organization’s research and advocacy. She has published extensively on human rights, and testified to the Canadian Parliament, European Parliament, and the United States Senate and House of Representatives. Dr. Richardson is the author of China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (Columbia University Press, Dec. 2009), an in-depth examination of China’s foreign policy since 1954’s Geneva Conference, including rare interviews with Chinese policy makers. She speaks Mandarin, and received her doctorate from the University of Virginia and her BA from Oberlin College. Her current research focuses on the global implications of democracies’ weak responses to increasingly repressive Chinese governments, and she is advising several China-focused human rights organizations.