Updates: 11/12/2021 8:53 PM
Released: 12.11.2021, 17:12

Prague – The World Uyghur Congress will elect a new leadership at the General Assembly in Prague this weekend. A conference was held today, bringing together prison and re-education camp survivors, academics, experts, diplomats and politicians. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Pavel Fischer (independent), also spoke. He gave the congress the patronage of the Prague mayor Zdeněk Hřib (Pirates) and lent his residence for part of the program. The event was strongly condemned by the Chinese side in a statement by the spokesman of the embassy in the Czech Republic. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this is a private event in which neither the ministry nor the government has been involved.

China faces allegations that it has set up a number of international camps in the Uyghur Autonomous Region in the same struggle against Islamism, holding more than a million minority Uighurs. The Chinese authorities refer to the camps as vocational training centers where Uyghurs undergo political re-education. According to human rights activists, there are forced labor and violent political agitation in the camps. Uighur women are being sterilized and Uighurs are being forced to renounce their Muslim faith, language and culture, activists say. In February, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang I called the allegation that China was committing the Uyghur genocide on a minority a lie of the century.

The panels of today’s conference focused on the testimony of the survivors, the political approach to the Uighur crisis, the use of legal means to prosecute the perpetrators and bringing them to justice, as well as research methods essential for exposing the Uyghur genocide. The General Assembly elections will take place this weekend. “Through 200 delegates from 25 countries, members of 16 committees and congress bodies, including the presidency, will be elected,” the site said. 62 Uighur delegates are applying for 32 positions.

Boletus spoke in a panel debate. The CTK program said that after the end of today’s experience with bullying by China in connection with the attempt to delete from one Beijing agreement between Prague and Beijing, that Prague China. Beijing did not accept the change and the agreement concluded under Mayor Adriana Krnáčová (YES) was terminated in October 2019.

The mushroom also mentioned that China’s influence is being overestimated. “If you look at the outcome, China threatened to do it because of a trade trip to Taiwan, it was that they did not take 11 pianos,” he said. The shipment from Petrof on the way of Senate President Miloš Vystrčil (ODS) to Taiwan was not taken over by a Chinese customer last year, the pianos and then bought by the family foundation of billionaire Karel Komárek, with the proviso that it is distributed to Czech schools.

After the conference, Hřib met with three survivors from the Uighur detention centers. He clearly considers the treatment of Uyghurs to be genocide, and the international community should respond to the problem. “If the EU is serious about the fight for human rights, it does not want to admit these concentration camps and the final solution, it would say use its trade power,” ČTK Hřib said. As an export-based economy, trade measures would have a significant impact on China, he added.

“This is a private event under the auspices of the mayor of Prague, in which neither the Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor the government was involved in any way.

The Chinese side, through an embassy spokesman, strongly condemned the “anti-Chinese separatist activities” that the congress said. He opposes Czech institutions and politicians to use this opportunity to interfere in China’s internal affairs.

According to the embassy, ​​the congress is an anti-China separatist organization that has long been fabricating slander and lies about Xinjiang, spreading religious extremism and inciting terrorist and separatist activities. Xinjiang is a Chinese autonomous province inhabited by Uyghurs. Congress leader Dolkun Isa is described as a terrorist, according to the Chinese government embassy.

The embassy spokesman called it a complete lie that there was genocide, cultural extermination and forced labor in Xinjiang. “The issue of Xinjiang is not about ethnicity, religion or human rights, but about terrorism, separatism and extremism,” he said.

The Chinese side called on the “couple of Czech individuals” to understand the separatist nature of the congress, to abide by international law and basic norms of international relations, not to support anti-Chinese separatist activities and to create conditions for the development of Sino-Czech relations.

China’s Uyghur minority law