Young Labour activists among our supporters have asked us to launch this pledge: we’re calling on candidates in the Young Labour election to commit, if they win, to using their posts to build campaigning solidarity with the Uyghur people. If you are a candidate in these elections and you would like to sign the pledge, please email us at uyghursolidarityuk@gmail.com – we will update the list regularly.
The Uyghur Solidarity Campaign UK is building and bringing together support in the workers’ movement and the left, for the Uyghur people’s struggle for freedom
We are candidates in the Young Labour elections, standing in solidarity with the Uyghur people’s battle against their repression by the Chinese state.
The Uyghurs, a majority-Muslim people who mostly live in East Turkestan (occupied and ruled by China as “Xinjiang”), are being subjected to state persecution on an historic scale, aiming to forcibly assimilate them and eliminate them as a distinct people and culture. This includes:
- mass internment of likely more than a million people in concentration camps for “re-education”, with reports of torture, abuse and rape;
- a regime of suffocating surveillance from public spaces to the home;
- mass separation of children from families;
- monitoring and suppression of political dissent, Muslim religious practices, and Uyghur cultural expression;
- the use of coercive sterilisation and contraception to reduce birth rates in the Uyghur population, which may meet the definition of genocide under the UN Genocide Convention;
- forced labour re-education programmes in factories supplying dozens of global brands like Apple, Google and Nike.
As young socialists and internationalists, we recognise the need to stand with and take action in solidarity with the Uyghur people. We are encouraged by the growing awareness and anger among many young people about this injustice, shown not just on social media but by events such as the spontaneously-called protest in London in September. As candidates, we want Young Labour to organise more young people to take action on this issue, from street protests to worker solidarity in the supply chains moving and selling the products of Uyghur forced labour, and including participating in actions organised by the Uyghur Solidarity Campaign UK.
Cam Rose, candidate for International Rep
Rosie McKenna, candidate for International Rep
Megan Hayman, candidate for Under 18s’ Rep
Maliha Reza, candidate for Student Rep
Alli McKelvey, candidate for Student Rep
Louise Leslie, candidate for South East Rep
Jennifer Maidment, candidate for West Midlands Rep
Candidates please email us at uyghursolidarityuk@gmail.com to add your name – we will update the list regularly
Uyghur Solidarity UK 