Remarks by Omer Kanat, Director, Uyghur Human Rights ProjectDelivered by Louisa Greve, Director for External Affairs, Uyghur Human Rights ProjectAt the Thirteenth Interethnic Interfaith Leadership ConferenceWashington, DCDecember 10, 2018

The Chinese Communist Party poses a fundamental threat to civilized values and a rules-based international order. The Party’s massive crackdown in 2018 is breathtaking, encompassing independent intellectuals, civil society, and religious believers of all kinds, including Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetan Buddhists, Chinese Buddhists, and Hui and Turkic Muslims across the length and breadth of China.The Uyghurs’ homeland of East Turkestan has been ground zero. The German scholar Adrian Zenz, in Congressional testimony on September 26, 2018, described what is happening in the Uyghur homeland as “a monstrous crime against humanity, on a scale and level of sophistication that has rarely been witnessed in modern history.”Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Scott Busby provided the official US government assessment of the scale of the crackdown on Uyghurs in his Senate testimony last week. The U.S. government believes that at least 800 thousand, and possibly over two million people, have been swept up into mass-detention camps in East Turkestan since April 2017. It has been 20 months since this nightmare began. These camps are not temporary. Experts are now calling them concentration camps.Uyghurs are asking, how can the world continue “business as usual” with a regime systematically expanding concentration camps in the 21st Century?And indeed, the world is now taking action. Senator Rubio and Representative Chris Smith have shown true global leadership, mounting a vigorous defense of the democratic values now under attack. Uyghurs feel their leadership can only be compared to that of Winston Churchill. Churchill went against the tide of his times, when the democracies of the 1930s preferred to conduct business as usual with Germany. They preferred a comfortable pretense that concessions to an expansionary dictatorship would buy time and peace.The U.S. Congress passed the Global Magnitsky Act in 2016. On November 14 this year, the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act was introduced in the Senate and the House by a bipartisan coalition led by Senator Rubio, Senator Menendez, Representative Chris Smith, and Representative Tom Suozzi.The Uyghur Human Rights Act ramps up momentum for sanctions on Chinese officials and companies complicit in rights abuses. It also supports vigorous law-enforcement investigation by the FBI of Chinese security forces carrying out threats, intimidation and coercion against Uyghur-Americans and Chinese dissidents.In an extraordinary statement issued on 26 November at the National Press Club in Washington, 278 leading academics from around the globe endorsed immediate action to close the camps. They called for sanctions on Chinese government officials and private companies complicit in the camp system, and the hi-tech total-control surveillance systems in East Turkestan. They urged academic institutions around the world to suspend their partnerships until the camps have been closed and all detainees are released. As of this morning, the statement has been signed by 603 scholars from 39 countries. In normal times, scholars refrain from speaking out government policy. For 600 scholars from around the world to call for sanctions is a clarion call: these are not normal times.At China’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the United Nations on November 6, 24 countries issued an extraordinary diplomatic rebuke to China regarding its pitiless brutality against the Uyghur people. The following week, Canadian diplomats in Beijing spearheaded a request by a group of 15 ambassadors for an urgent meeting with Chen Quanguo, the Xinjiang party secretary.But this is not enough. Governments must impose serious Magnitsky sanctions, so that perpetrators of crimes against humanity pay a price for their unspeakable cruelty. Businesses must be put on notice that they may not profit from brutality. If they do not withdraw immediately from participation in the CCP’s systems of surveillance, censorship, and torture, they must face government sanctions.And democracies must act urgently to defend their citizens from the Chinese state’s export of repression. Uyghurs abroad are experiencing a living nightmare. They suffer crippling anxiety and fear for their loved ones who have disappeared. As one Uyghur in Australia told Louisa Lim, “‘My husband is struggling. When he rang his family inside China, they would hang up.” The couple had started tabulating names of those they knew in camps; there were already 28 names on the list.The model and the technology underpinning mass repression in Xinjiang is already being rolled out to other parts of China. East Turkestan has been a laboratory of repression, and the results are already being felt in Ningxia and elsewhere. Incredibly, the Hong Kong government announced that it was sending a delegation to Xinjiang to study China’s model there. This should set our hair on fire. Yet there is more. Not only is Beijing is seeking to export its surveillance systems around the globe but has openly stated that its model of “social stability” should be emulated by Europe and the Middle East.China’s challenge to the rules-based global order could not be more frightening.International momentum is now building to hold China to account, and act to end the shocking atrocities unfolding in East Turkistan. Immediate action is necessary not only to uphold our democratic values, but also our core security and strategic interests: the protection of our own citizens, the rules-based international order, and the promise we made 70 years ago: Never Again.
迫害试验场—中国在维吾尔人家园犯下的反人类罪恶
维吾尔人权项目主任乌麦尔.卡纳特在第十三届族群青年领袖研习营开幕式上的演讲 (中文译稿)
维吾尔人权项目外交事务主管高保玲 (Louisa Greve)代读
2018年12月10日,华盛顿

​​SLXLM

中国共产党对现代文明和法制是一个根本威胁;中国共产党在2018年,在全中国范围内的大规模镇压令人瞠目结舌;镇压对象不仅涵盖了独立知识分子、公民社会及各宗教教徒,也包括了基督徒、法轮功实践者、藏传佛教徒、中国佛教徒和回、突厥穆斯林。
维吾尔人的家园东突厥斯坦是镇压中心;德国学者安德里亚则客,在2018年9月26日在国会作证时,对正发生在维吾尔人家园的镇压描述说:“在规模和技术手法上都是近代历史鲜见的一种魔鬼式的反人类罪行。”
美国国务院助理国务卿斯科特白斯毕在上星期作证时,给出了美国政府对镇压规模的官方评估;美国政府确认,自2017年4月起,至少八十万,可能多达2百万人被大规模抓捕关押于东突厥斯坦集中营;这一可怕悲剧开始已经有20多个月了,证实这些集中营根本不是暂时的;现在,专家学者也都称其为集中营。
维吾尔人在质问,世界怎么能和一个在二十一世纪还在系统性扩建集中营的政权,继续其“一切如往常”的关系?
然而,是的,世界在行动,参议员卢比奥和国会议员科瑞斯斯密斯,以强势捍卫处于攻击的民主,突显其世界领袖的风范;维吾尔人觉得他们的领导能力可以和丘吉尔比肩;当1930年代的民主国家青睐和德国的“一切如往常”时,丘吉尔逆当时的潮流站出来捍卫民主;当时的民主国家意为和一个扩张主义的独裁者的妥协能赢的时间和和平。
2016年,美国国会通过了马格尼茨基法案;今年11月14日,在参议院卢比奥、参议员梅南德兹及国会议员科瑞斯·斯密斯和国会议员托马斯·苏兹的带动下,有参众两院同时介绍了维吾尔人权法案。
维吾尔人权法案强化了要求制裁中国官员和成为践踏人权帮凶的公司;该法案同时支持联邦调查局强势执法调查中国安全人员对美国维吾尔人和中国异议人士的威胁、吓唬和迫害。
11月26日在华盛顿特区国家新闻俱乐部发布的特别声明中,全世界278位各界著名学者发表声明表示支持立即关闭集中营;他们呼吁制裁中国政府官员,以及成为在东突厥斯坦集中营系统和高科技全面监控系统帮凶的私立公司;他们敦促全世界各学术机构暂停和中国的合作直到集中营被关闭羁押人员被释放;到今天早为止,签字声明表达支持人数增至39个国家的603位学者;平常,学者鲜少批评政府政策;全世界600多位学者共同呼吁制裁向世界发出了清晰的信号:现在不是平常时期。

11月6日,在联合国定期综合审议中国人权时,24个国家发布了极为强硬的外交声明谴责了中国无情残酷迫害维吾尔人行为;紧接着,一周后,加拿大驻北京外交使节牵头有15国使节要求紧急会见新疆党委书记陈全国。但这些还不够,政府必须实施严格的马格尼茨基法案,以使那些犯有反人类罪的罪犯为其犯下的骇人的罪行付出代价;商业企业也必须被告知不能以协助镇压赚钱,如果他们不立即自中共全面监控、审查和酷刑折磨系统抽身,也将面临政府制裁。

民主政府必须立即行动起来保护其公民不受到中国伸到海外长手的迫害;海外维吾尔人正在经历一场噩梦;他们因亲人的失踪而担忧害怕;就如一位澳大利亚的维吾尔人告诉路易莎林:“我的丈夫处在焦虑中,当他给中国的家人打电话时,他们都会挂断。”夫妻俩开始为那些他们知道在集中营的亲人列表,名单上已经列了28个人。

标志新疆大规模镇压的方式和技术早已经开始向中国其他地方蔓延;东突厥斯坦俨然镇压试验场,其结果已经在宁夏的其他地方见到;更令人惊讶的是,香港政府也宣布其将派出一个代表团学习研究中国在那儿的模式;这已是火烧眉毛了;然而还有更甚的,北京不仅想向世界出口监控系统,而且还公开声明他的“社会稳定”模式,欧洲和中东应该仿效。

中国对法治为基础的世界秩序的挑战再不能比这更令人担忧了。国际上要求追究中国责任、结束东突厥斯坦骇人暴行的呼声正日益强烈;不仅为了捍卫我们的民主价值观,而且也为了我们的战略核心利益,立即采取行动是必要的:以保护我们的公民、保护法制为基础的国际秩序,和保守70年前的承诺:永远不许再发生。