UHRP Welcomes European Call for Targeted Sanctions In Response to the Uyghur Crisis
For immediate release
December 20, 2019 5:02 pm EST
Contact: Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) +1 (202) 478 1920
The Uyghur Human Rights Project celebrates the passage of a resolution in the European Parliament calling for the adoption and implementation of an EU sanctions regime targeting those Chinese officials who are responsible for policies targeting Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Turkic Muslim-majority peoples in East Turkestan.
The resolution “expresses its deepest concerns about the increasingly repressive regime that Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities are facing and demands that the authorities respect their fundamental freedoms, as recommended by credible reports.”
It further “strongly condemns the sending of hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs to political ‘re-education camps’ on the basis of a system of predictive policing, including for having travelled abroad or being adjudged too religiously devout.”
Other highlights of the resolution include calls on the Chinese authorities to release the detained and to provide unfettered access to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to journalists, the UN, and other independent observers.
In response to the passage of the resolution, UHRP Executive Director Omer Kanat said, “Uyghurs around the world are happy to see such a strong expression of European values. This is a historic moment. Europe has now spoken with one voice in solidarity with Uyghurs. European governments must now act. Business as usual cannot continue.”
Since 2017, the Chinese government has conducted an intensified campaign of repression against Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples that has included mass internment, widescale harsh sentencing, and forced labor.
Recent leaks of Chinese government documents to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and The New York Times reveal the Chinese Communist Party’s genocidal intent in East Turkestan through “no mercy” policies.