Date: Friday, July 28, 2023
Time: 9:30 am (Washington, DC), 2:30pm (London), 3:30 pm (Zurich, ), 7:00pm (New Delhi)
Event Type: Virtual (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter)
The Chinese government’s policies towards ethnic and religious minorities have widely been characterized as genocide. Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have launched the second-generation ethnic policy (第二 代 民族 政策) through which the Uyghurs, Tibetans and other minority non-Chinese communities are experiencing unprecedented suppression and eventual eradication of their language, religious practices, traditions and independent histories. The end goal is assimilation and sinicization. There are credible and numerous reports of forced labor, mass surveillance, re-education camps, mass collection of DNA, massive colonial boarding school systems, forced sterilizations, increasing restrictions on religious practices, etc. How does the Chinese government policies amount to cultural genocide? What has been the impact on the targeted communities? How can the impacted communities and the international community counter the CCP policies?
Speakers:
| Enghebatu Togochog Director of the SMHRIC, Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Centre |
Zumretay Arkin Program & Advocacy Manager at the World Uyghur Congress |
| Tenzin Choekyi Senior Researcher at Tibet Watch |
Prof. Dibyesh Anand Professor at the University of Westminster, UK |
| Moderator: Sakina Batt (Host, Freedom Hour, AFI) |
Streaming Links:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/AsiaFreedomInstitute/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AsiaFreedomInstitute/streams
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AsiaFreedomInst
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Enghebatu Togochog
Born in Southern Mongolia, Enghebatu Togochog came to the United States in 1998. In 2001, He established the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC), a New York based human rights organization dedicated to promoting and protecting the rights of the Mongolian people in Southern Mongolia. Currently he is the Director of the SMRHIC and the chief editor of the organizational newsletter “Southern Mongolia Watch”. He has testified on human rights conditions in Southern Mongolia before the United Nations Human Rights Council, United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, United Nations Forum on Minority Issues, United Nations Committee Against Torture, and European Parliament, and the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
Zumretay Arkin
Zumretay Arkin is the Program and Advocacy Manager at the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) based in Munich, Germany. She leads WUC’s global advocacy efforts, with a focus on advocacy at the United Nations. She is also the spokesperson of the WUC offering commentary to international media outlets in English, French and Uyghur, including Reuters, Associated Press, France 24, Al Jazeera, and BBC. She is also the Chair of the Women’s Committee of the WUC, mobilizing women and youth in her community.
Tenzin Choekyi
Tenzin Choekyi is Senior Researcher at Tibet Watch, an association that monitors and researches human rights violations and policy changes inside Tibet. She provides analysis of the situation in Tibet to parliamentarians, journalists, and campaigners. She has a specialization in environmental science and has also served as a trilingual interpreter and content writer.
Dibyesh Anand
Dibyesh Anand is the Head of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Westminster, UK; and a professor of international relations. He is the author of “Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination” and “Tibet: A Victim of Geopolitics.” He has spoken and written extensively on various topics including postcolonial politics and international relations, Tibet, China-India border dispute and colonial practices of postcolonial states. He is the Co-Chair of Westminster’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee, the Chair of London Higher’s EDI Network as well as of International Studies Association’s LGBTQA Caucus.
Sakina Batt
Sakina Batt is the host of Freedom Hour, a program of the Asia Freedom Institute. She is also a producer at Meeting Point, a leading audio visual production house and buying agency in Nepal. She directs promotional videos, does voice overs, writes scripts and copywriting for the videos in Meeting Point. Sakina worked for Tibet TV at the Central Tibetan Administration in India for four years (2017-2021) where she served as a news presenter and an interview host. She also made short documentaries for the channel, wrote scripts, conducted research, edited videos and anchored the show In Conversation with Tibet TV. Sakina has a Masters in Mass Communication from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi and a bachelors from Delhi University.
