UHRP Grateful for Nobel Peace Prize Nomination for Uyghur Human Rights Work

February 8, 2022, 9:00 a.m. EST
For Immediate Release
Contact: Omer Kanat +1 (202) 790-1795, Peter Irwin +1 (646) 906-7722

The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) is honored to have been nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, alongside Campaign for Uyghurs, by Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Chris Smith (R-NJ), co-chairs of the bipartisan Congressional Uyghur Caucus.

“It’s a tremendous honor to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize,” said UHRP Executive Director Omer Kanat. “This recognition confirms our great responsibility to the Uyghur people to work to stop the ongoing genocide.”

The nomination letter stated that “One day, the genocide and other abuses suffered by the Uyghur people will end, and the international community will seek to hold the perpetrators accountable. The UHRP’s extensive documentation and evidence-based research will be crucial to that effort.” 

Representative Suozzi said, “Put simply, the Chinese Communist Party has committed genocide against the Uyghur people. For years, these atrocities went unnoticed by the public eye. But through the heroic work of the Uyghur Human Rights Project and the Campaign for Uyghurs, and countless others, they brought this genocide front and center for the world to see. Let us never forget the words spoken by Dr. Martin Luther King, who was jailed nearly thirty times for his activism and trumped-up charges, when he said, “the greatest tragedy is not the brutality of the evil people, but rather the silence of the good people.”

UHRP and the Campaign for Uyghurs were nominated, according to the letter, on the basis of making “significant contributions to building fraternity between nations and promoting peace by defending the human rights of the Uyghur, Kazakh and other predominately Muslim ethnic minorities that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has targeted with genocide and other crimes against humanity.”

Since our founding in 2004, UHRP has worked to promote the rights of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim peoples in East Turkistan through research-based advocacy. We publish reports and analysis to defend Uyghurs’ civil, political, social, cultural, and economic rights according to international human rights standards.