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| ChinaAid President Bob Fu (left) and Kuzzat Altay of the Uyghur Entrepreneurs Network (right) speaking at a side event of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, on Sept. 19, 2019. (Photo: ChinaAid) |
ChinaAid
(Geneva—Sept. 19, 2019) A group of global human rights leaders, including ChinaAid’s Bob Fu, spoke at a series of sessions related to the convening of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) this week.
This morning, Fu informed the HRC of many of China’s human rights, religious freedom, and rule of law abuses at a side event related to the HRC’s main gatherings. In his speech, Fu detailed how Christians have been routinely targeted and persecuted for their faith, with pastors and church members arrested, tortured, and otherwise harassed. He also stated that millions of minority people in China’s Xinjiang region were facing ethnic cleansing as China imprisons them in “re-education camps,” a network of prison facilities designed to lock away, torture, and brainwash. He followed that by bringing up the cases of Chinese attorneys, who are often persecuted for their support of victims of human rights abuses. Fu concluded by recommending that the HRC appoint a Special Rapporteur for Chinese religious freedom and asked that the Special Rapporteurs for arbitrary detention and religious freedom urge China to invite them to “visit and investigate the abuses mentioned above and any other human rights violations occurring within the country of which the United Nations may become aware.”
A full recording of Fu’s speech can be viewed below, and a transcript can be read here.
Other speakers at the event included Kuzzat Altay from the Uyghur Entrepreneurs Network, Gulbahar Jalilova, whose speech can be read here, Golog Jigme, whose testimony ChinaAid has not yet procured, and Hyeona Ji, a North Korean refugee, whose statement can be read here.
Yesterday, Altay gave a joint statement from the Jubilee Campaign at the 19th Plenary Meeting of the 42nd Regular Session of the Human Rights Council. Many of Altay’s family members, including his father, have disappeared into China’s “re-education camps,” a network of concentration camps in the nation’s Xinjiang that lock away and routinely torture and otherwise abuse millions of ethnic minorities, including members of the area’s Uyghur and Kazakh population. To view a recording of Altay’s speech, please click here (Altay begins at the 01:21:03 mark).
Altay also brought up the case of Tashpolat Tiyip during these meetings, a Uyghur academic who has been sentenced to death, for whom Amnesty International has launched an urgent campaign. Altay questioned why Tiyip was sent to a “re-education camp” when he was already well-educated.
During the side event, two members from the China Mission, an embassy-like organization in Geneva that handles UN affairs, claimed to be from an NGO and asked Fu whether or not ChinaAid accepted funding from the U.S. government. Fu replied that ChinaAid does not receive funding from the American government and demanded to know who had funded these two men.
Additionally, the China Mission representatives requested that Altay provide evidence that the ethnic minority atrocities were occurring. Altay asked where his father and a missing classmate were if he truly had no evidence.
ChinaAid would like to thank the HRC for inviting these individuals to give their testimonies and urges the United Nations and other political bodies to take urgent action on behalf of these persecuted communities.
ChinaAid Media Team
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