On Thursday, June 26, 2007, from 2 pm to 4 pm, members of the Uyghur American Association (UAA), the local Uyghur community and supporters of human rights for Uyghurs and human rights in China will gather in the park in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., to raise awareness about human rights abuses being committed against the Uyghur people in East Turkistan (also known as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China) and other human rights abuses taking place in the People’s Republic of China.

Participants will first gather at the park in Dupont Circle at 1 pm, and will then walk north up Connecticut Avenue towards the Chinese Embassy. The demonstration will feature speeches by Alim Seytoff, UAA General Secretary; T. Kumar, Advocacy Director for Asia & Pacific for Amnesty International USA; Lucie Morillon, Washington Director at Reporters Without Borders; Yang Jianli, Chair, Foundation for China in the 21st Century; and Miranda Yen, Project Director of the Laogai Research Foundation.

Members of the public and the media are welcome to attend.

The demonstration will coincide with demonstrations being held by Uyghur groups on the same day in other cities around the world to raise awareness about Uyghur human rights issues. Beijing Olympic organizers recently moved the East Turkistan portion of the domestic torch relay forward one week- the torch was originally scheduled to arrive in East Turkistan on June 25, but passed through East Turkistan from June 17-19.

While the Olympic torch has traditionally been viewed as a symbol of international peace and freedom, its passage through East Turkistan took place in a climate of fear, heavy security, and the exclusion of all but a few hand-picked Uyghurs. In both the regional capitol of Urumchi and the traditionally-Uyghur southern city of Kashgar, areas surrounding the torch’s route were placed under virtual lockdown. Reports indicate that Uyghur residents of these cities were subjected to harassment and particularly harsh security measures, and that thousands of Uyghurs were detained throughout East Turkistan in the period leading up to the torch’s arrival.

The Uyghur people of East Turkistan face a multi-tiered campaign to suppress their identity and culture, as the Chinese government sponsors the mass in-migration of ethnic Han Chinese people; the transfer of young Uyghur women to work in eastern China and of Uyghur high school students to study in special schools in coastal cities; the removal of Uyghur as a language of instruction in schools; and the arrest and detention of Uyghurs who transmit peaceful religious and cultural messages that are at odds with official policy.

Demonstration details:

Park in front of the Chinese Embassy
2300 Connecticut Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20008

June 26, 2008
2:00 pm to 4:00 pm

(Interested participants will first gather at the park in Dupont Circle at 1 pm and then walk up Connecticut Avenue toward the Chinese Embassy).

April 25, 2008

Georgetown history professor James Millward will give a talk entitled “Eurasian Crossroads: History and the Present in Chinese Central Asia” on Wednesday, April 30 at 4:30 p.m. in Leighton Hall, room 304. Millward’s presentation is free and open to the public.

In his research, Millward focuses on the geographic areas of China and Inner Asia, the area that is shaped by its position at a figurative cross-road of the European and Asian continents, and is loosely constituted by several former Soviet republics, Afghanistan, Mongolia, and the Chinese provinces of Xinjiang and Tibet. His work spans the fields of politics, religion, education, and economics in this region.

During his talk, Millward will address the long-term history of China’s relations with Central Asia, a topic related to his recently published book “Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang” (Columbia University Press, 2007), which speaks to the implications of the area’s geographic context as well as its multiethnic character and role as a hub for trade and the dissemination of religious thought. As Carleton history professor Adeeb Khalid points out, the Xinjiang province in particular “is a place of considerable political fermentation [as] a non-Han region of China where the government of the People’s Republic of China fears separatist movements.”

Millward has a PhD from Stanford University. He is also the editor of New Qing Imperial History: The Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde (RoutledgeCurzon, 2004) and Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity and Empire in Qing Xinjiang (Stanford University Press, 1998), in which he examines the realities of specific geographic locales within the context of the Qing dynasty, which was in power in China from 1644 to 1911. Beyond Central Asia, his interests extend to chordophone and guitar history.

This appearance is sponsored by the Department of History. For more information, call (507) 222-4217.

Human Rights Without Frontiers Int'l
 

Asbl - National Registration Number: 473809960
Associated member of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights

Avenue Winston Churchill 11/33, 1180 Brussels, Belgium
Office Phone: + 32 2 3456145 - Fax: + 32 2 3437491

Invitation to a conference on human rights in China

on Tuesday 18 December (2:00 - 7:30 pm)

at the European Parliament in Brussels

See details of the programme below (list of sponsors still to be completed and confirmed).

Please use the Registration Form and send it back to the email address that is mentioned

Editor-in-chief: Willy Fautré

Email: info@hrwf.org
Website: http://www.hrwf.net

_______________________________________

Human Rights in China

No Olympic Medal

14h00: Opening remarks

• Istvan Szent-Ivanyi MEP, 1st Vice-Chair of the EP Delegation for Relations with the Korean Peninsula
• Edward McMillan-Scott MEP, Vice-President of the EP
• Sakharov Prize laureates

14h50 – 19h30: Panel discussion chaired by Istvan Szent-Ivanyi MEP,

Edward McMillan-Scott MEP, Ana Gomez MEP,

Thomas Mann MEP, Jules Maaten MEP

Olympic Games and Human Rights Violations

Freedom of Expression and Internet Censorship

Death Penalty, Torture, Detention Conditions

Human Rights Defenders

Labor Rights

North Korean Refugees in China

Freedom of Religion, Tibet Issues, Uighur Issues, Falun Gong

19h30: Cocktail offered by Edward McMillan-Scott MEP, Vice-President of the EP

The Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies

presents

The Eighteenth Annual Nava’i Lecture in Central Asian Studies

Abandoned in a Geopolitical Quagmire:  The Uyghurs of Central Asia in the Post-9/11 Era

with
Dr. Sean Roberts,
Post-Doctoral Fellow in Central Asian Studies

6:00 PM
November 29, 2007

Riggs Library
Georgetown University

Reception will follow the lecture
Click Here to RSVP

The lecture focuses on the fate of the stateless Uyghur nation of Central Asia, both in former Soviet states and in China, following the tragic events of September 11, 2001.  Since the terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center's twin towers, the Uyghurs have virtually lost all international support for their tenuous position as a minority under siege in the Xinjiang region of the People's Republic of China.  While the Uyghurs' situation in China is much like that of the Tibetans, the Chinese state's assertions that the Uyghurs' independence movement is a radical Islamic terrorist threat has meant in the present global context that the international community has more or less abandoned the Uyghurs, whose homeland is part of China bordering on the post-Soviet Central Asian states.  The talk explores this abandonment in the context of the Uyghurs' difficult historical engagement with geopolitics and their position in the post-9/11 world order.  The lecture's conclusions provide insights into the emergent geopolitical context facilitated by America's "Global War on Terror" as well as reflections on the persistent relevance of the nation-state in an increasingly globalizing world.

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Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service
Georgetown University
Box 571031,ICC 111
Washington, DC 20057-1031
Ph. 202.687.6080
Fax. 202.687.5829
ceres.georgetown.edu