The Uyghur Human Rights Project remembers the victims of the 9/11 attacks on the United States
For immediate release
September 10, 2019 5:00 pm EST
Contact: Uyghur Human Rights Project +1 (202) 478-1920
On the anniversary of 9/11, the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) expresses its condolences to the families who lost loved ones in the terror attacks on New York City and Washington, DC.
As a Washington- based organization, UHRP and the Uyghur community in Northern Virginia stand with Americans in promoting the ideals of freedom, human rights, and democracy.
UHRP encourages the international community maintain its efforts to end terrorism and to oppose states’ cynical leverage of ‘terrorism’ narratives to repress minorities.
The struggle against terrorism is bound by international human rights standards. The Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy clearly states:
Measures to ensure respect for human rights for all and the rule of law as the fundamental basis for the fight against terrorism.
“Uyghurs and Uyghur-Americans extend their sympathy to the families who experienced such painful loss on 9/11,” said UHRP Director Omer Kanat in a statement.
“For some, the imperative of preventing another 9/11 became an excuse to commit terrible acts of repression. The Chinese government has exploited the attacks on the United States to recast Uyghurs as potential terrorists. Since 2001, the government used this misleading narrative to curb the rights of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples; however, since 2017, the Chinese Communist Party has turned to ‘state terror‘ and interned one and half million, possibly three million, individuals as part of a so-called de-radicalization campaign.”
UHRP supports the efforts of the U.S. Congress to protect Uyghurs from this Chinese government repression through legislation.
The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019 highlights:
In 2014, Chinese authorities launched their latest ‘Strike Hard against Violent Extremism’ campaign, in which the pretext of wide-scale, internationally linked threats of terrorism were used to justify pervasive restrictions on, and gross human rights violations of, the ethnic minority communities of Xinjiang.
The Uighur Intervention and Global Humanitarian Unified Response (UIGHUR) Act of 2019 states:
The mass arbitrary detention of persons on the basis of their religious or ethnic background, without due process of law or individualized credible allegations of wrongdoing against each detained individual, is not a credible or effective counterterrorism strategy and constitutes a severe violation of international norms and standards.
The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019 (H.R. 649 and S.178), and the UIGHUR Act of 2019 (H.R 1025) mobilize action to bring an end to the violations based on opportunistic Chinese government narratives of counterterrorism and endorse multiple steps to protect the rights of Uyghurs.
We encourage U.S. citizens to call or write your Senators, Representatives asking Members of Congress to support the bipartisan Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019 and the UIGHUR Act of 2019.
On a somber day of remembrance, UHRP honors the victims of terror and works towards ending the exploitation of counterterror measures as a means of justifying the repression of people targeted for their ethno-religious identities.