A Uyghur’s Escape From China Was Just the Beginning – The New York Times

November 10, 2024 | The New York Times | By Nyrola Elimä and Ben Mauk

Yet other countries have been slow to follow suit. In February 2023 Canada announced that it would accept 10,000 Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims without legal status. None have yet been resettled. And although the United States has declared the persecution of Uyghurs in China to be a genocide, few have found refuge here. As many as 1,000 are waiting for the results of their asylum applications, according to U.H.R.P.

And in many places, China remains able to leverage its considerable influence. In recent years Uyghurs have been deported to China from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. Some of these deportations followed the issuing of Interpol red notices at China’s request, although Interpol forbids their use in cases of political persecution. In 2021, a Uyghur man was arrested in Morocco based on a red notice issued by China that critics called abusive, and that Interpol subsequently revoked, although he remains imprisoned. As recently as 2023, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Malta to halt the planned deportation of a Uyghur couple whose asylum applications had been rejected. And in Turkey, thousands of Chinese Uyghurs remain at risk of deportation. Some relatives of the men at Suan Plu told us they are too afraid to speak out lest they lose their residence status. In 2019, Turkey deported four Uyghurs to Tajikistan, from where they were sent to China. “Uyghurs aren’t really safe anywhere,” Peter Irwin, a researcher with U.H.R.P., says.

U.N.H.C.R., the U.N. agency that supports asylum seekers at camps along the Thailand-Myanmar border, may have the best chance of navigating the quagmire. But U.N.H.C.R.’s track record with Uyghur asylum seekers is poor. According to a 2023 U.H.R.P. report, the agency is often ‘unable to provide meaningful protection to Uyghur refugees.'”

Read the full article: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/10/magazine/uyghur-china-escape.html