Thanks to the National Education Union and its General Secretaries, Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, for making a statement of solidarity with the Uyghur people and particularly Uyghur women, against Chinese state violence & persecution. The NEU organises more than half a million workers in UK schools and colleges.
You can find their statement on the NEU website and we reproduce it below. The NEU joins the PCS (civil service workers), as well as various branches and regions of UNISON (public sector workers) and the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), all standing in solidarity with the persecuted peoples of East Turkestan/Xinjiang.
Our campaign exists to organise grassroots solidarity in the workers’ movement and the wider left. We believe worker solidarity like this can change the world!
Statement of solidarity with Uyghur Women and Uyghur Muslims
Reposted from the National Education Union’s website
The NEU has been sickened and horrified by the latest reports on the treatment of Uyghur women in “re-education” camps in China’s Xinjiang region.
Systematic rape, sexual abuse, and torture have been documented in new accounts obtained by the BBC. Systematic persecution by the Chinese state means that Uyghur women are also facing incarceration in internment camps, physical and mental torture, and forced sterilisation.
The NEU condemns these gross violations of women’s and human rights in the strongest possible terms. Attacks on women’s rights anywhere represent attacks on women’s rights everywhere. The international community must act and defend these most basic human rights.
The barbaric treatment of Uyghur women is occurring amid the persecution of over one million Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. Clear evidence of human rights abuses includes mass internment, forced labour, political re-education, forcible separation of children from their families, and torture.
As a trade union, we are dedicated to the advancement of human rights. The international community must act to end these heinous abuses and secure the full, unequivocal realisation of human rights for Uyghur Muslims in China.
Mary Bousted & Kevin Courtney
Joint General Secretaries
NEU
Uyghur Solidarity UK 