IHRC has been highlighting the situation of China’s Uighur Muslims since 2008. Our work has focused on the discriminatory policies of state as well as documenting persecution if communities because of their religious and ethnic identities.

Our work has included two reports which detailed many of the troubling policies of the state: from forcing Uighur women to marry Chinese men to a systematic policy of eradicating the Uighur Islamic identity. Our research on this topic has been shared at the UN and EU level and has been used to campaign to raise the profile of Uighur Muslims in China. 

1. China has accepted that there are “re-education” camps in Xinjiang where Uighur Muslims are detained. IHRC is campaigning for all camps to be shutdown immediately as they violate the rights and dignity of those detained.
2. Multiple testimonies attest to the systematic use of torture to extract confessions as well as force individuals to provide names of others practicing Islam.
3. Uighur families have testified that children have been removed and placed in “re-education” camps. This is being used as a means to re-engineer the Uighur identity.
4. The policies pusued by china violate the following international principles:
   1. The prohibition against torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. These rights are protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
   2. Right to life, liberty and security of person as well as protection from arbitrary arrest or detention. These rights are protected under the UDHR, and ICCPR.
   3. Right to freedom of thought, belief, and religion. These rights are protected under the UDHR and ICCPR.
   4. The “right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference.” Furthermore “No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence…” Finally, governments “shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will” unless that separation is in the child’s “best interests.” These rights are protected under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, (which China ratified in 1992).