Dear Supporters:

International Support for Uyghurs (ISU) brings to your attention a critical development in the human rights landscape that demands immediate action.

We are reaching out on behalf of the International Support for Uyghurs (ISU) to bring your attention to recent developments in the United States, where 78 new companies have been added to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List. This move highlights the urgency of preventing forced labor products linked to Xinjiang from entering international markets.

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.

The Walt Disney Company’s live-action remake of the movie Mulan had already been receiving backlash prior to its release due to the main actress supporting the Hong Kong police and their crackdowns on the pro-democracy protesters. However, after the movie’s release on Disney+, it is receiving even more criticism. In the final credits, Disney offers their thanks to eight government entities in East Turkistan, otherwise known as “Xinjiang”, where both concentration camps and forced labour camps are present and documented.

By 2021, an independent Uyghur tribunal will be held in London, United Kingdom. The highly acclaimed British lawyer and prosecutor, Barrister Geoffrey Nice, has been asked by the World Uyghur Congress to investigate whether the Chinese government’s human rights abuses against Uyghurs in East Turkistan constitutes genocide.

The World Uyghur Congress demands that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) reconsider holding the upcoming Winter Games in Beijing, China. The growing body of evidence shows that the Chinese government is violating human rights, and committing genocide against Uyghurs and other Turkic people of East Turkistan.

Merdan Ghappar is a successful Uyghur model that is now detained by the Chinese Communist Party in one of the concentration camps in East Turkistan. When he was taken to the medical wing due to signs of sickness during the height of the pandemic in China, he was able to secretly have access to his phone and film the inside of the room. The small room with only a bed as furniture shows Mr.

Under the Global Magnitsky Act, the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office Assets Control (OFAC) has sanctioned four CCP officials and a Chinese entity, the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau, for human rights abuses against Uyghurs.

“Is the face mask I am wearing today made under forced labour by my relatives?” Members of the Uyghur diaspora are wondering. A New York Times visual investigation revealed that the Chinese government is exploiting Uyghurs to meet the surging international need for face masks and personal protective equipment (PPE) during the Covid-19 pandemic.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) seized 13 tons of hair. The shipment is suspected to be products sourced from Uyghur concentration camp detainees and processed in forced labor factories in East Turkistan.

Since 2017, the Communist Party of China (CCP) has implemented a strategic policy called the “Industrial Xinjiang Aid” to eradicate the Uyghur identity while financially benefiting from it. The CCP promotes forced mass migration of Uyghurs and other Turkic people to labour factories that supply 81 well-known multinational companies such as Nike

The Chinese Communist Party does not only want to remove Uyghurs’ cultural and religious identity, but they also want to eradicate them completely. German Anthropologist Adrian Zenz observes that as China loosens reproduction restrictions on the Han Chinese population, the opposite occurs for the Uyghurs and Muslim ethnic minorities in East Turkistan.