A new report “Twenty Years for Learning the Quran: Uyghur Women and Religious Persecution” published by the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) provides new evidence of Chinese government repression against Uyghur women.
The report found that “Uyghur women are denied freedom of religion and belief. Women’s religious learning and religious gatherings, daily prayer, and wearing the hijab have all been explicitly criminalized.” Female religious leaders (büwi) have been detained and imprisoned.
“Our report provides detailed information on hundreds of Uyghur women persecuted for their religion. Many of them were condemned to long terms in prison for the ‘crime’ of learning a few verses of the Quran when they were children. The Chinese government has taken respected women of faith, senior community leaders, and educated young women, and subjected them to the dehumanizing regime of the region’s camps and prisons,” said Professor Rachel Harris, a co-author of the report.
The report calls on:
- Parliamentarians advocate for the release of Uyghur women, including büwi and ustaz, as Religious Prisoners of Conscience, urging disclosure of their health and whereabouts.
- Governments and multilateral bodies, as well as women’s rights campaigns, to demand accountability and cessation of torture, enforced disappearance, and imprisonment inflicted on Uyghur and Turkic women.
- UN officials, including the Secretary-General and Special Rapporteurs, to publicly address gender-based crimes in the Uyghur region and press the Chinese government to immediately release arbitrarily detained individuals.
For More:
The Uyghur Human Rights Project
