Justice For All’s Save Uyghur Campaign Welcomes Holocaust Museum’s Position On China’s Crimes Against Humanity

Justice For All’s Save Uyghur campaign welcomes the statement on the Uyghur by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, Naomi Kikoler, said “Every government has committed to protect their populations from crimes against humanity. In this case, there is a reasonable basis to believe that the Chinese government is failing in this regard, and they are committing the crimes against humanity of persecution and imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty.”. She was speaking at an event titled “China’s Systematic Persecution of Uyghurs”. She also spoke on the supposed rationale that the Chinese have stated, saying, “In this case, the Chinese government claims to be fighting terrorism or eradicating poverty—but these are goals that cannot possibly be reached by the systematic persecution of the Uyghur population”.

The center joins other prominent US institutions in recognizing what is happening with the Uyghur population in the East Turkestan (Xinjiang) region of China as crimes against humanity. Previously, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China had termed Uyghur detentions as a crime against humanity. The recognition of persecution of the Uyghur as a crime is important since it could open up a possible prosecution of Chinese officials in international courts of justice.

Justice For All calls on other US & international institutions, especially those focused on Human Rights and Holocaust studies to join the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Time is not on the side of the Uyghur, and we must act with determined expedition in getting China to release all of the Uyghur in detention camps and to allow them all the freedoms that are guaranteed under the UN Charter of Human Rights.