Prosecute Transnational Repression of Uyghurs

Stand Up Against

Transnational Repression

of the Uyghur People

 

Mihrugul Tursun, a Uyghur woman who survived internment at a Chinese internment camp

Mihrugul Tursun, a Uyghur woman who survived detention at a Chinese internment camp. Photo courtesy of Kuzzat Altay is unmodified and licensed under Unsplash’s Content License.

“The Chinese government has killed and imprisoned us. They’ve targeted us inside China and across borders, even into the United States. Their goal is physical and cultural destruction of our people.”

Inside China, Uyghur people are forced into internment camps. Uyghur children are sent to boarding schools for “re-education” — a euphemism for culture erasure. Uyghur men and women are used as slave labor.

These conditions constitute genocide.

Through surveillance, infiltration, intimidation, harassment, extradition, and rendition, China oppresses overseas Uyghurs as well.

This is the felony crime of transnational repression (TNR), terrorizing victims and destroying democracy.

Actions

1. Email your members of Congress today

Time: 10 minutes

Ask your U.S. Senators and Representative to pass the Transnational Repression Act [H.R. 3654 | S.831].

Email your U.S. Senators:

  1. Find your U.S. Senators online here.
  2. Use or modify our email template to send to your Senators.

Email your U.S. Representative:

  1. Find your U.S. Representative online here. 
  2. Use or modify our email template to send to your Representatives.

2. Support the Uyghur community

Time: 5 minutes

  • Buy the book, “Daddy? Daddy, when are you coming home?,” available on Kindle and in paperback. This beautiful children’s book raises awareness about Uyghur culture and genocide. Order copies as gifts. Buy the book for your local library and for elementary schools.
  • Look up a Uyghur business to support. Dine at a Uyghur-owned restaurant.

Learn More

Background

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in western China is home to some of the gravest and most systematic human rights abuses in the 21st century. The Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim minority, are subjected to restricted religious and cultural freedom, arbitrary detention, invasive surveillance, and an attempt by the Chinese government to erase their cultural identity through re-education camps.

Tensions between the Chinese and the Uyghur minority have existed in the Xinjiang region for centuries. However, the international community has recently been made aware of mass internment camps in which hundreds of thousands of Muslim Chinese and Muslim foreign citizens with ethnic ties to the Uyghur population are imprisoned.

China’s ‘re-education’ and detention centers have expanded rapidly since 2014. The system is now the world’s largest mass incarceration of a minority group. Eyewitnesses report rampant physical and psychological abuse in the centers.

Evidence supports claims of both cultural genocide and physical genocide, including forced sterilization of women; removal of children from their families; extrajudicial arrests, forced labor, torture, murders; and forced organ harvesting.

Forced Labor

Chinese factories use Uyghur forced labor to cut production costs for goods that are used all over the world.  In March 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) released a report naming 83 major global brands that use Uyghur forced labor in their supply chains.

The report, titled “Uyghurs for Sale,” uncovered 27 factories in 9 Chinese provinces using Uyghur forced labor. The brands below all relied on at least one of these 27 factories to produce their goods, implicating them in China’s persecution of the Uyghurs.

To learn about the extent to which a brand is connected to Uyghur forced labor, or how this list was created, check out the ASPI report here.

Not buying the above brands would encourage companies that benefit from Uyghur forced labor to take positive action.

 

Updated September 2023.