GSP Director Simon signs letter supporting COI on Uyghur persecution

GSP Director David Simon joined dozens of other genocide scholars and activists in signing a letter calling for a Commission of Inquiry into the treatment of Uyghurs in East Turkistan, a region encompassed by China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.  The letter, penned by the Washington-based group called the Uyghur Human Rights Project, cites several instances of publically reported episodes that, if accurately reported, would seem to be consistent with the commission of Crimes Against Humanity and possibly the crime of Genocide against the Uyghur people.  Indeed, the possible transgressions are so dire that an impartial United Nations inquiry is necessary to address the allegation.

Concluding that “[i]t is our collective responsibility to protect populations from mass atrocities, including crimes against humanity and genocide,” the letter cites a range of publically alleged atrocities, including “arbitrary detention of between 1 and 1.8 million people in internment camps, a widespread program of political indoctrination, enforced disappearances, destruction of cultural sites, forced labour, disproportionate rates of prison incarceration, and coercive birth prevention campaigns and policies.”

Full text of the letter is available here: https://docs.uhrp.org/pdf/UyghurGenocideJointOpenLetter_2020-09-14.pdf (opens to pdf)