Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
14 February 2023
The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) strongly denounces plans by the European Union and the United Kingdom to meet with Erkin Tuniyaz, Chairman of the “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region”. The U.K.’s Foreign Office is set to meet him next week, after which Tuniyaz will reportedly visit Brussels from 19-21 February for a discussion with representatives from the European External Action Service (EEAS). Legal action is being prepared in the UK following his visit.
“It is shocking and incomprehensible that the UK and EU would choose to meet with Erkin Tuniyaz, who has played a leading role in the genocide against the Uyghur and other Turkic people”, WUC President, Dolkun Isa, said. “Proven complicity in crimes against humanity and genocide must be a clear red line, and must lead to justice and accountability instead of engagement.”
Tuniyaz, who has been Chairman of XUAR since September 2021, has held leading positions within the regional government in East Turkistan for at least 15 years. In these roles, he has been one of the main officials responsible for overseeing the mass arbitrary detention of millions of Uyghurs and various other egregious human rights abuses. Tuniyaz was sanctioned for his complicity by the United States in December 2021.
Tuniyaz has also gained notoriety for defending these policies on multiple occasions, including in a video address to the United Nations in February 2021. The system of concentration camps “educated and rehabilitated people influenced by religious extremism”, he said.
In its latest report, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) analysed the Chinese government’s so-called “counter-terrorism” policies, it concluded that these are “deeply problematic from the perspective of international human rights norms and standards”, and “has in practice led to the large-scale arbitrary deprivation of liberty of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities”.
“Known criminals complicit in some of the worst human rights abuses in the world today should not be legitimised with meetings with Government officials,” WUC’s UK Director, Rahima Mahmut, stated. “Both the UK and EU Parliaments have recognized these atrocities as crimes against humanity and genocide. This alone should have been reason enough to refuse to engage with Erkin Tuniyaz.”
In response to Tuniyaz’s visit to the UK, British barrister Michael Polak, acting on behalf of Kazakh camp survivor Erbakit Otarbay, has requested Tuniyaz be prosecuted over his role in atrocities in the region. A formal request has been made to the Attorney General of the United Kingdom for permission to prosecute Tuniyaz over his involvement in crimes of torture, and evidence has been passed to the Metropolitan Police’s War Crimes team for the investigation.
The WUC calls on the UK as well as the EU and its member states to rescind any official invitation to meet with Erkin Tuniyaz, to make a public apology to the Uyghur community, and to focus efforts on holding complicit individuals such as Erkin Tuniyaz to account. #