by EASt/ULB

with Vanessa Frangville, Université libre de Bruxelles – EASt, Rune Steenberg, University of Copenhagen & Halmurat Harri #metooUyghur activist

The Uyghurs of Xinjiang have received a great deal of media attention ever since the first reports about the so called “re-education camps” emerged in 2017. Since then direct contact to Uyghurs in the region has become difficult and risky. This is due to measures called by the Chinese authorities counter-extremification but interpreted by human rights groups in terms of grave violations of the rights and dignity of Xinjiang’s ethnic minorities. This talk provides the necessary historical, political and economic background for making sense of what is happening today in Xinjiang. It will also attempt to discern facts from rumor and shed light on why reliable information on current developments in the region is so scarce.

Since 2018, China and Uyghur scholars from all around the world have voiced concerned about the human right crisis in the Uyghur region, where hundreds of thousands are detained in detention camps. A global coalition of scholars, journalists and activists have worked together to gather evidence of China’s expanding security crackdown in the region, and called for Western governments to add pressure on China over internment camps and arbitrary arrests of Uyghur writers, scholars, artists and other public figures. This talk provides an overview of the various actions taken by concerned scholars, and looks at how they have engaged with various actors (activists, journalists, politicians, witnesses, overseas Uyghurs and other groups from the civil society) to call for global solidarity with the Uyghurs.

Tuesday 14th May 2019 from 5:30PM

MSH link http://msh.ulb.ac.be/agenda/2948/
Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/events/324396511584248/

Free entrance
Registration at east@ulb.ac.be