Interview: ‘We Are Gravely Concerned About the Deteriorating Situation in China’

July 16, 2021

Uyghur-American lawyer Nury Turkel, is a vice-chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a bipartisan and independent federal government body. As the chairman of the board for the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) in Washington, he has played a major role in raising awareness of the plight of the 12 million Uyghurs in the Chinese-controlled Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). On Friday, a day after the inaugural three-day International Religious Freedom Summit (IRF) in Washington, where senior U.S. government officials focused heavily on China’s targeting of Uyghurs in XUAR in a crackdown on the minority group and its language, religion, and culture that intensified in 2017, Turkel and other USCIRF commissioners met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Turkel, who this year was named by Fortune magazine as one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders,” shared his views on the U.S. approach to the Uyghur issue and global religious freedom issues with RFA Uyghur Service Director Alim Seytoff in a video interview. The interview has been edited for length.

RFA: Secretary Blinken has met with your commission, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, right after the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington. What was the purpose of Secretary Blinken’s meeting with your commission?

Read the full article: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/uscirf-turkel-07162021193427.html