Justice For All’s Save Uyghur Campaign Responds to UN Experts’ Alarm on Forced labor in China-occupied East Turkistan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 22, 2026

Washington, DC – Justice For All’s Save Uyghur Campaign welcomes and echoes the grave concerns raised today by United Nations human rights experts regarding ongoing reports of state-imposed forced labor affecting Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tibetans, and other groups.

In their statement, UN experts warned of a persistent and widespread system of coercive labor transfers tied to so-called poverty alleviation and vocational training programs. These policies, implemented across East Turkistan and Tibet, reportedly involve surveillance, restrictions on movement, threats of punishment, and the absence of any real choice for those subjected to them. The experts cautioned that the severity of these practices may amount to crimes against humanity, including forcible transfer and enslavement.

Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, President of Justice For All, said the UN experts’ findings confirm what victims and advocates have been reporting for years. “This is not about employment or development. It is about control, coercion, and the deliberate dismantling of entire peoples’ ways of life,” Imam Mujahid said. “When the state uses fear, detention, and surveillance to force communities into labor and relocation, that is forced labor by any honest definition. The international community can no longer treat this as an allegation. It is a documented pattern that demands accountability.”

The UN experts highlighted that millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic groups have been subjected to labor transfers under China’s five-year plans, while hundreds of thousands of Tibetans have been affected through similar schemes and mass relocation programs. These policies, the experts warned, erode language, religion, community ties, and traditional livelihoods, causing long-term and irreversible harm.

Arslan Hidayat, Save Uyghur Campaign Team Lead, stressed that forced labor cannot be separated from the broader campaign against Uyghur identity. “Forced labor is one pillar of a much larger system designed to break Uyghur society,” Hidayat said. “When people are uprooted from their land, stripped of choice, and forced into monitored labor far from their communities, it is about erasing who they are. This is why we continue to call it what it is: a coordinated campaign of repression that reaches the level of not just crimes against humanity but genocide as well.”

Justice For All also underscores the UN experts’ warning about forced-labor-linked goods entering global supply chains through third countries and urges governments, investors, and corporations to take these findings seriously and to strengthen enforcement of human rights due diligence and import restrictions. Justice For All’s Save Uyghur Campaign renews its call for unfettered access for independent UN human rights mechanisms to China, meaningful accountability measures, and concrete action by governments and businesses to ensure they are not complicit in forced labor and mass repression.

Contact Information: Hena Zuberi, Director, DC Operations

Email: hena@justiceforall.org. Phone: 202-908-JUST

Website: https://www.justiceforall.org/save-uighur/