Co-organizer: Hong Kong Human Rights Front
Event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1212807803533384
Opening Session: Xinjiang’s Human Rights Crisis and Taiwan
This was the opening session of the lecture series marking 36 years since the June 4th massacre, a conversation between Uyghur advocate Tashken Davlet and indigenous-rights advocate yapasuyongu akuyana (陳旻園).
As news of Xinjiang’s “re-education camps” shocked the world, the curtain concealing the genocide of the Uyghurs was finally drawn back. Investigations indicate that at its peak more than a million Uyghurs were detained in the camps at the same time, subjected to forced sterilization, torture, indoctrination, and forced labour by the Chinese Communist Party. That repression on such a large and systematic scale could take place in the twenty-first century has been hard for the world to believe, and international experts and human rights organizations continue to work to stop these abuses and to press the Chinese government to honour basic international human rights.
What exactly has happened in Xinjiang? Why has the CCP carried out repression on this scale? How are the Uyghurs and “Xinjiang” historically connected to China? What are East Turkestan and the movement for Xinjiang independence? As Taiwanese, how should we respond to all this — and can the advocacy experience of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, and their experience of resisting CCP infiltration, offer a basis for dialogue, mutual aid, and mutual support?
This session set out to answer those questions: to understand Xinjiang’s human rights crisis and its historical context, to see how recent developments relate to us, and, through the resistance experience of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, both to avoid unwittingly becoming complicit and to show the world the strength of Taiwan’s pluralism.
Speakers
- Tashken Davlet: A Taiwanese of Uyghur descent, he previously worked as an outreach officer at the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), a Washington-based non-profit, where he handled coordination across movements and issues. UHRP is North America’s most prominent research and advocacy organization on Uyghur human rights, and was nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.
- yapasuyongu akuyana (陳旻園): A member of the Tsou people and a doctoral student at the School of Law, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, he has long worked on indigenous rights and policy research. Over more than two decades in the indigenous social movement he has served as a legislative bill assistant, as a director of the Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation, and currently as secretary of the Taiwan Indigenous Peoples’ Tribal Action Coalition, an executive committee member of Covenants Watch, and chair of the Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Policy Association. His research spans law, public policy, and indigenous studies, with particular attention to transitional justice, judicial reform, and the realization of indigenous collective rights, and he has written extensively on indigenous land rights, hunting rights, and transitional justice.