Media Advisory: Uyghur Genocide Recognition Day Press Conference (Thursday, December 8)

Media-Advisory-Uyghur-Genocide-Day-

For Immediate Release
Contacts: Peter Irwin +1 (646) 906-7722, Julie Millsap +1 (830) 822-7289
Uyghur Human Rights Project

WHAT: Why is December 9 Uyghur Genocide Recognition Day?

WHEN: Thursday, December 8, 2022, 9:30–10:30 a.m. EST

WHERE: National Press Club, Fourth Estate Room, 13th Floor, 529 14th St., NW, Washington, DC 20045 (the press conference will also be streaming from UHRP’s YouTube page here).

SPEAKERS:

  • Mr. Omer Kanat, Executive Director, Uyghur Human Rights Project
  • Mr. Dolkun Isa, President, World Uyghur Congress
  • Ms. Elfidar Iltebir, President, Uyghur American Association
  • Ms. Erin Farrell Rosenberg, Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights
  • Ms. Sarah Teich, human rights lawyer, Macdonald-Laurier Institute 
  • State Department Bureau of Human Rights, Labor and Democracy (DRL)
  • State Department Office of Global Justice
  • Congressional messages
  • Additional speakers to be confirmed 

WHY: Uyghur human-rights defenders around the world have designed December 9 as Uyghur Genocide Recognition Day, to be marked annually. On December 9, 2021, the Uyghur Tribunal issued its Final Judgment, concluding that the human rights crimes committed against Uyghurs amount to genocide and crimes against humanity. 

SPONSORS: Uyghur Human Rights Project, World Uyghur Congress, Uyghur American Association

BACKGROUND: 

The Uyghur Tribunal, an international group of attorneys, academics, and NGO representatives, released its Summary Judgment, held hearings in June, September, and November 2021. The  Tribunal’s expert panel reviewed over 500 witnesses statements and heard live evidence from more than 30 witnesses about their experiences of the Chinese government’s oppressive policies and its concentration camp system, as well as from 40 expert witnesses. The evidence database includes upwards of 100,000 pages of documents on the situation in East Turkistan. 

A large majority of eyewitnesses highlighted the systematic torture and rape in the internment camps, forced labour, forced sterilization and abortions of Uyghur women, and the surveillance system in place in the region. Expert witnesses provided evidence from internal Chinese government  documents, public government directives, open-source Chinese government media posts, and analysis of government statistics.

The Tribunal concluded that “in Xinjiang and at the hands of some part or parts of the PRC government and the CCP:  (a) Hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs – with some estimates well in excess of a million – have been detained by PRC authorities without any, or any remotely sufficient reason, and subjected to acts of unconscionable cruelty, depravity and inhumanity.  Sometimes up to 50 have been detained in a cell of 22 square meters [240 square feet] so that it was not possible for all to lie on concrete (or similar) floors, with buckets for toilets to be used in view of all in the cell, observed at every moment by CCTV.  (b) Many of those detained have been tortured for no reason, by such methods as:  pulling off fingernails; beating with sticks; detaining in ‘tiger chairs’ where feet and hands were locked in position for hours or days without break; confined in containers up to the neck in cold water; and detained in cages so small that standing or lying was impossible.  (c) Many of those detained have been shackled by heavy metal weights at their feet and sometimes with feet and hands connected, immobilized for months on end.  (d) Detained women – and men – have been raped and subjected to extreme sexual violence.  One young woman of twenty or twenty-one was gang raped by policemen in front of an audience of a hundred people all forced to watch.  (e) Women detainees have had their vaginas and rectums penetrated by electric shock rods and iron bars.  Women were raped by men paying to be allowed into the detention centre for the purpose.  (f) Detainees were fed with food barely sufficient to sustain life and frequently insufficient to sustain health, food that could be withheld at whim to punish or humiliate.  (g) Detainees were subjected to solitary confinement in cells permanently dark or permanently lit, deprived of sleep for days at a time and ritually humiliated.

The Tribunal Jury:

Sir Geoffrey Nice, Chair 

Nick Vetch, Vice-Chair 

Tim Clarke

Professor Raminder Kaur

Professor Dame Parveen Kumar

Professor David Linch

Professor Ambreena Manji

Professor Audrey Osler 

Catherine Roe 

The Tribunal Final Judgment delivery: CHURCH HOUSE WESTMINSTER 9 December 2021