Since 2017, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has waged a systemic campaign of oppression and persecution against Uyghur Muslims, a predominantly Turkic-speaking ethnic group. The geographic scope of the CCP’s campaign against Uyghurs is global, but primarily restricted to Xinjiang, China’s western-most territory, where Uyghurs have lived for centuries. Under the guise of national security, …
Continue...Today, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an official determination that the People’s Republic of China is “committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, China, for targeting Uyghur Muslims and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups.” This announcement comes on Secretary Pompeo’s last day in office and a day before the inauguration …
Continue...“Their goal is to destroy everyone. And everybody knows it.” Tursunay Ziawudun, a Uyghur woman, spent nine months in one of China’s internment camps in Xinjiang. She was recently interviewed for a BBC article detailing the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse that Uyghur women face in the camps. In the article, Uyghur women who have …
Continue...December 3, 2021 The Honorable Antony BlinkenSecretary of StateU.S. Department of State2201 C Street NWWashington, D.C. 20520 Dear Secretary Blinken, I am writing today to express my profound concerns about recent reports that the White House and members of the State Department are actively working to slow down and dilute the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention …
Continue...The ERLC affirms that all people are created in God’s image and have innate dignity and worth, and deserve to be treated with respect. The right to believe, practice, and live according to one’s own religious faith is a God-given, fundamental human right. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states in Article 2 that “everyone …
Continue...When most of us in the West think about technology, our minds often revert to our smartphones, social media, and computer technology. Many of the debates surrounding these technologies tend to focus on how these tools are altering our behaviors, reformulating how we think about the very nature of truth, or even how they are …
Continue...For years, the Uyghur people living in the Xinjiang region of western China have endured brutality at the hands of the Chinese government. Many have been “subjected to reeducation camps, forced labor, and even forced sterilization in women.” In January 2021, “[then] Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an official determination that the People’s Republic …
Continue...Since 2017, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has waged a systemic campaign of oppression and persecution against Uyghur Muslims. The state-sanctioned violence has come in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), China’s western-most territory, where Uyghurs have lived for centuries. The CCP is using totalitarian tactics like pervasive surveillance, thought control, ideological reeducation, forced birth control, …
Continue...For the past four years, the world has watched one alarming report after another trickle out from Xinjiang, China’s westernmost territory. On Oct. 5, 2021, however, a former Chinese prison guard shared particularly horrifying accounts of the torture Uyghurs endure in Xinjiang “reeducation” camps: “Kick them, beat them (until they’re) bruised and swollen. Until they kneel on …
Continue...Public policy advocacy is one of the many ways the ERLC fulfills its ministry in the public square. We recently released our 2022 Public Policy Agenda, which focuses on more than three dozen policy issues we will advocate before the U.S. Congress. The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) has been through a season of …
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