As the daughter of a Uyghur economist imprisoned for life, I call on governments and the UN to act together
- Jewher Ilham, the daughter of Ilham Tohti, is an author at the Project to Combat Forced Labor at the Worker Rights Consortium. Sophie Richardson is China director at Human Rights Watch
China’s president, Xi Jinping, declared back in 2014 in a series of speeches delivered in private to officials that he intended to crack down harshly in Xinjiang, the north-western region of China where about 13 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims make up half the population. The reality of that “strike hard against violent extremism” campaign, which followed decades of repressive policies, is now clear: Chinese authorities are committing crimes against humanity.
Xi’s comments followed several violent incidents reportedly involving Uyghurs that year. And among his statements, in documents leaked to the media, was this: “Don’t be afraid if hostile forces whine, or if hostile forces malign the image of Xinjiang.”
