CFU PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 10, 2023, 1:00 PM ET

Sabrina Sohail: sabrina@campaignforuyghurs.org

(650) 703-4523

www.campaignforuyghurs.org

Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU) strongly condemns the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) manipulative Potemkin tours with the “World Muslim Communities Council (TWMCC)” delegation’s visit to East Turkistan, which was made up of more than 30 Muslim scholars from 14 countries including Albania, Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and United Arab Emirates. The CCP uses such visits to garner support from those Muslim-majority countries for China’s so-called counter-terrorism and extremism policies. Beijing has been successfully exploiting and utilizing visits like these to deny and whitewash its ongoing campaign of colonialism, genocide, and occupation of East Turkistan while actively waging war on Islam and criminalizing the entire normal practice of religion as illegal Islamic activities.

Here is a quick summary of what is currently going on in Chinese occupied East Turkistan. Uyghurs are forced to attend Chinese flag raising ceremonies and pledge their allegiance to the Chinese communist party. Uyghur Muslim women are forced to undergo birth control to curb the Muslim population. They are subject to forced sterilization, forced abortions and they are subject to the forceful insertion of IUDS, injections and pills against their will in detention camps. Uyghur Muslim women are forced into marriages with Han Chinese men. If they refuse, they will be labeled extremists and sent to the camps. The CCP has sent party cadres to live with Uyghur families to “supervise” and “monitor” their daily lives under the guise of the “Pair-up relatives program”. For many Uyghur Muslim women, they are subject to sexual abuse even in their own homes whilst their husbands are detained in concentration camps or taken to the prisons. Almost a million Uyghur children are forced to attend boarding schools/state run orphanages where they are being raised up as non-Muslims and be ‘loyal’ subjects. They are wiping out the identity, religion and culture of Uyghurs.

Executive Director Rushan Abbas said “They went on a Potemkin tour where they visited the fabricated ‘Anti-Terror Exhibition’ in Urumchi setup by the Chinese authorities, justifying the detention of Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps in their purpose-built Propaganda Museum. It is not a coincidence that right after our Uyghur advocacy tour of the Muslim world in South-East Asia and the Middle East in the last few months, that now China has decided to put on this show for the Muslim world. This shows that the CCP is going out of its way to cover the truth about the Uyghur genocide and their eradication of Islam in East Turkistan, from the Muslim world. It just goes to show that we still have plenty of work to do in the Middle-East to tackle, head-on, the blatant falsehoods and disinformation campaign of the CCP regime to our fellow Muslim brothers and sisters.”

CFU urges Muslim-majority states and scholars to support Uyghurs on World platforms like the United Nations and not support China’s genocidal policies against the Uyghur people by visiting East Turkistan on staged tours led by the Chinese regime and buying into China’s propaganda. Muslim, Muslim scholars, Muslim organizations and Muslim-majority states should interact with Uyghur Muslims in diaspora and Uyghur organizations, who can speak freely without worrying for their own safety to hear the truth about the Uyghur genocide and the CCP’s crimes against Islam. It is the duty of each and every Muslim to double-check the information they have been provided from all sides before coming to their own conclusions and release statements.