CFU PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 20, 2026, 12:00 PM EST

Contact: contact@campaignforuyghurs.org    

https://campaignforuyghurs.org/

Washington, D.C. – Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU) strongly condemns the recent remarks by Olympian Eileen Gu, who stated that the fate of Uyghurs facing genocide in China is “not [her] business.” At a time when millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples have endured mass detention, forced labor, family separation, and systematic repression, and when credible evidence, including China’s own leaked documents, is readily available, such indifference is deeply troubling.

The genocide of Uyghurs is not an abstract debate requiring a “lifelong search” for evidence, as stated by the Olympian. This has been confirmed by around a dozen governments and parliaments, including the United States and Canada. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ 2022 assessment concluded that these actions may constitute international crimes, in particular “crimes against humanity.” The independent Uyghur Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice, concluded that China’s actions constitute the crime of genocide under international law. In January 2026, UN experts stated that the coercive conditions imposed on Uyghur laborers may amount to enslavement, a crime against humanity. The Chinese embassy in the US publicly celebrated their genocidal policies and tweeted, “Uyghur women are no longer baby-making machines.”

“Calling a genocide ‘not my business’ is not just heartlessness, but it is abetment of the genocide. Uyghurs, people entitled to the same basic human rights as the Olympian, are systematically targeted, imprisoned, and trafficked into forced labor. Their body, dignity, and hopes are crushed. Even members of the diaspora live in the shadow of transnational repression. My own sister, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, has been imprisoned by the Chinese Regime for nearly eight years simply to silence my advocacy,” stated CFU Executive Director Rushan Abbas. “When a government is credibly accused of genocide, silence and ignorance become complicity. If history has taught us anything, it is that authoritarian regimes spare no one. Each of us bears a responsibility to act,” Abbas added. 

Ms. Gu began her career representing the U.S. Olympic team while enjoying the freedom and respect for human dignity. She then voluntarily chose to represent China, a country currently committing genocide against Uyghurs, perpetrating crimes against humanity against Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, Southern Mongolians, and Chinese dissidents, suppressing democracy in Hong Kong, threatening Taiwan, and extending its reach globally through transnational repression. Among the sponsors supporting her, Chinese sports equipment brand ANTA and the Chinese electronics company TCL have been linked to Uyghur forced labor. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau “was set to pay Ms. Gu and another athlete a combined $6.6 million” in 2025. These links make her not only complicit but an enabler of China’s atrocities.  

By contrast, U.S. figure skater Alysa Liu, a recent gold medalist, and her family were surveilled by the Chinese government due to her father’s involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which were later brutally crushed in a massacre. Alysa reportedly rejected China’s recruitment efforts. 

CFU calls on Ms. Gu to stop claiming ignorance of the overwhelming evidence of genocide, to stop rejecting the testimonies of survivors from concentration camps, and to confront the heartbreaking images of detainees in the Xinjiang Police Files. The Uyghur region is now a police state under constant surveillance; the Uyghur language is banned, while Uyghur culture, ethnic identity, and religious practice are criminalized. Uyghur women are subjected to forced sterilization, coerced abortions, and forced marriages. The blood, sweat, and tears of the Uyghurs sustain global supply chains, while their organs are harvested to create another stream of profit for the Communist Party.

What remains visible in the region is a carefully curated image of normalcy, maintained under repression and fear of arbitrary detention or imprisonment. History will remember those who raised their voices and those who remained complicit and allowed China to continue its systematic human rights abuses.