On November 13, 2021 it was reported by human rights organization Radio Free Asia that a Chinese job placement firm was involved in transferring thousands of Uyghur people including girls as young as 16 to factories in the Mainland (Radio Free Asia 2021). The ad which was posted on Weibo as well as Wechat offered work for Uyghurs aged 16-30 with proficiency in Mandarin and vocational school degrees.

A Manitoba couple is now speaking out about the horrors they witnessed while living in East Turkistan. Andrea and Gary Dick had lived in East Turkistan for ten years and set up a social enterprise that processed agricultural waste and sold compost to farmers.

A survey conducted by Nanos Research found that 45% of the 1048 people that were interviewed would like to see less trade with China. Only 10% of the people stated that Canada should be doing more trade with China. The remaining people have answered that they are not sure, or that the level of the trade should stay the same.

In 2021, the Chinese government is continuing its genocide against Uyghurs and stepping up its efforts to intimidate human rights activists abroad. Just a week ago, on December 30th, Gulshan Abbas was sentenced to 20 years in prison by Beijing.

Saudi Arabia deported four Uyghurs to China. These deportations are considered extralegal considering the Uyghurs mentioned were either living in the country legally or were there for pilgrimage. Saudi Arabia has been providing asylum for Uyghurs since the 1930s, but their recent behaviour shows a change in their pattern.

Before the voting on October 13, activists and rights groups were calling on the UN state members to not allow China to keep their seat at the UN Human Rights Council due to their continuous human rights violations and ongoing genocide of Uyghurs in East Turkistan, called “Xinjiang” by the Chinese government.

Muslim majority countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Egypt were found to be deporting Uyghurs back to China in collaboration with Beijing. An Uyghur woman reported that her husband had disappeared five years ago since his arrest and deportation from Saudi Arabia to China. According to many testimonies like hers,

The House of Representatives in the U.S passed a legislation aimed at reducing the exchange of goods made in forced labour camps by Uyghurs. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act’s goal is to prevent certain imports from East Turkistan, and impose sanctions on those complicit in human rights abuses.

A new whitepaper released by the Chinese authorities has shed light into the scale of the human rights violations in East Turkistan by disclosing that, from 2014 to 2019, 1.29 million Uyghurs have gone through “vocational training” each year. These figures now confirm what has been known by the Uyghur diaspora, and based on on-the-ground sources, that more than 60% Uyghurs have been affected by Beijing’s policy of “vocational camps” which are really the cultural and physical genocide of the Uyghurs.