The independent UK-based panel, “Uyghur Tribunal,” probing human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang province will deliver its final judgement on December 09. According to the tribunal’s website, the judgement will be delivered by the panel’s chairperson, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC. It will be followed by a press conference. The announcement on the tribunal’s website read, “Following the delivery of the judgment there will be a press conference at which accredited press will be able to ask the panel questions.”
The tribunal consisting of Britain-based lawyers and rights experts has examined human rights violations and reports of alleged genocide in China’s Xinjiang region. The first session of the hearing took place in June this year, followed by the second and final hearing in September. The panel has heard first-hand testimonies of the alleged Uyghur genocide in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang, including forced sterilisation, torture, disappearances and slave labour. The hearings were requested by the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, the US-funded Uyghur lobby group that wants greater autonomy for Xinjiang.
Though the independent inquiry has no enforcement powers, organisers hope to hold China accountable for its treatment of Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities. In a statement, China said the hearings were “neither legal nor credible.” China foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said about the hearings, “It is just another anti-China farce concocted by a few individuals.”
So far, the US, the UK, Canada, and the Netherlands have recognised China’s treatment of its Uyghur minorities as a “genocide.”
