Latest modern slavery fight updates - FreedomUnited.org

Warning of Uyghur “genocide,” faith leaders urge action

  • Published on
    August 14, 2020
  • News Source Image
  • Category:
    Forced Labor
Hero Banner

Faith leaders from around the world have come together to condemn the Chinese government’s persecution of the Uyghur people and to call on the international community to take action.

In a statement released last week, the faith leaders declared the Uyghurs’ treatment to represent “one of the most egregious human tragedies since the Holocaust” and urged world leaders to investigate.

The signatories number over 70 and include the Dalai Lama’s representative in Europe, the Coptic archbishop of London, and the former archbishop of Canterbury, among other bishops, cardinals, imams, and rabbis.

The situation in the Uyghur Region is a test of “the willingness of the international community to defend universal human rights for everyone,” the leaders argued. 

The Guardian reports:

[The statement] adds: “The clear aim of the Chinese authorities is to eradicate the Uighur identity. China’s state media has stated that the goal is to ‘break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections and break their origins’ … High-level Chinese government documents speak of ‘absolutely no mercy’. Parliamentarians, governments and jurists have a responsibility to investigate.”

More than a million Uyghurs and other Turkic and Muslim-majority people have been detained in China’s Uyghur Region since 2017, many of them forced to work in camps and in factories across China.

A range of human rights abuses have been reported in addition to forced labor, including forced sterilization, torture, and forced organ harvesting.

Comparisons to the Holocaust have been growing in recent weeks, particularly in light of drone footage leaked last month that allegedly shows hundreds of blindfolded and shaven Uyghur men being led from a train.

The former Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, tweeted: “As a Jew, knowing our history, the sight of people being shaven-headed, lined up, boarded onto trains, and sent to concentration camps is particularly harrowing. That people in the 21st century are being murdered, terrorised, victimised, intimidated and robbed of their liberties because of the way they worship God is a moral outrage, a political scandal and a desecration of faith itself.” 

In urging governments and jurists not to stand idly by, the faith leaders evoked words widely used in reference to the Holocaust as an injunction to prevent all future forms of genocide: “never again.”

Freedom United has gathered over 32,000 signatures calling on the Chinese government to end the systematic forced labor of Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in the Uyghur Region.

Take a stand and add your name today.

Subscribe

Freedom United is interested in hearing from our community and welcomes relevant, informed comments, advice, and insights that advance the conversation around our campaigns and advocacy. We value inclusivity and respect within our community. To be approved, your comments should be civil.

stop icon A few things we do not tolerate: comments that promote discrimination, prejudice, racism, or xenophobia, as well as personal attacks or profanity. We screen submissions in order to create a space where the entire Freedom United community feels safe to express and exchange thoughtful opinions.

Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

This week

Theresa May’s legacy: migrant worker exploitation

As Theresa May bids farewell to politics, her legacy is one of controversy, particularly within migrant communities and advocacy circles. As prime minister May passed the Modern Slavery Act in 2015, hailed at the time as a crowning achievement that offered “world-leading protections” for trafficking survivors. May has also been at front and center of the criticism launched at her own party’s leadership for immigration policies that will

| Wednesday March 27, 2024

Read more