On Monday, the United Nations suddenly canceled a speech by an eminent scholar or exiled linguist barely 24 hours before contacting a Paris conference on linguistic technologies, he told Radio Free Asia.
In an e-mail to the Norway based researcher, Abduweli Ayup, shown in RFA Ughur, the organizers provided no reason to cancel the invitation to speak to linguistic technologies for all, or LT4all, conference, under the aegis of The United Nations educational, scientific and cultural organization, or. or UNESCO.
But Ayup said the reason was likely because he questioned an previous presenter about the Uighur language protections in China, where some 12 million UGHurs live in the northwest region of Xinjiang.
He and other Uighur activists say Beijing is trying to eradicate their mother tongue. They say that it is only an aspect of Chinese efforts to “treat” Uighis – a Turkish people who are distinct from Chinese Han – through a process of cultural assimilation.
On February 12, the LT4AL organizing committee sent a letter to Ayup inviting him to serve as president / rapporteur for an afternoon session scheduled for February 25 entitled “Education, inclusion, innovation” at headquarters From the UN to Paris, France. He accepted and was added to the program.
But on Monday, February 24, the organizers sent him an email saying that they had not been “able to guarantee approval” to include his presentation in the program and that they were “informed at the Last minute, and this decision is out of our control. “”
“We had hoped to find a better solution, but unfortunately, we have no other option at the moment,” said the letter. “Consequently, we will not be able to include your presentation in the file or the published program.”
“Threatened and disgusted”
Subsequently, in the articles of the X social media platform, Ayup described the decision as “disgusting”.
He suggested that it had been done in response to his interrogation one day earlier of a presenter, whom he described as “a Chinese language activist … [that] is a government official [who] works for [state media outlet] Hunan TV. “”
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Ayup said that the presenter had discussed a language museum in China during his session, after which Ayup had asked him if he contained information on the Uighur language and if activists of the Uighur language were safe in China.
“After these two questions, I was questioned by the Chinese delegation,” he said. “I felt threatened, I felt disgusted and disappointed. I believe that my presentation was canceled due to the questions I had asked the Chinese speaker. »»
Ayup did not provide evidence in support of its claims.
But he noted that the panel he listened to included an Iflytek representative – a partially Chinese information technology company belonging to the United States in October 2019 for its presumed role in mass surveillance and human rights violations in Xinjiang.
Ayup has developed further in an X position, accusing UNESCO of having “welcomed the criminal [and] Expelled human rights defenders “from the conference.
“Iflytek is the company [that] help [the] Chinese regime to be stopped [1] Millions of Ughurs, “he wrote in the post.
Family suffering
Ayup is the founder of Uighur Hjelp, an organization of plea and Uighur -based Uighur -based aid which maintains a list of Uighur Intellectuals detained.
In May 2021, the FRG learned that the Chinese authorities had condemned Ayup’s brother and sister to several years in prison in the Xinjiang, could have shown loyalty to the authorities as planned. Sources knowing the situation said they were arrested due to its exile activities.
Confirmation of the sentence occurred in the heels of an FRF report confirming that the niece of Ayup, Mihray Erkin, died at the Yanbulaq internment camp while he was the subject of a survey by the State security police in the Kashgar prefecture.
The case of Ayup is not the first time that the UN has blocked a Uighur activist to speak during an event he organized.
In April 2017, Dolkun Isa, founder of the Exile World Ughur Congress and member of the Nations Organization of Nations and Unpubseed Peoples, was forced to forum on the UN premises in New York by security guards without explanation.
The abolition of ISA caused a coalition of human rights and organizations defense groups representing minority peoples around the world to condemn the law, calling it an expression of “domination” by a Member State of the ‘UN nameless – an apparent reference to China.
The RFA attempts to contact UNESCO to comment on its decision to cancel Ayup’s invitation to the LT4ALL conference remained unanswered at the time of publication.
Translated by RFA UGHUR. Published by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.