Jurist Rights group urges US Congress to restore Radio Free Asia Uyghur service

[Dadparvar]

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urged US Congress on Monday to restore Radio Free Asia’s (RFA) Uyghur service to ensure journalists can continue reporting in one of China’s most isolated regions.

RSF noted that the announcement to close the Uyghur language service of RFA will have a long-lasting impact on the reporting of atrocities and repression of the ethnic Turkic people by the Chinese government. RSF Editorial Director Anne Bocandé stated:

Despite constant threats, RFA’s Uyghur journalists have tirelessly and courageously broken stories that revealed the true extent of the atrocities committed by the Chinese regime. Without RFA Uyghur, the international community will lose its only window into one of China’s most restricted regions, while Uyghur people will suffer the loss of their only independent outlet.

Gulchehra Hoja, a prominent journalist for the service who has been targeted several times by the government in Beijing, stated that US President Donald Trump’s decision to close Radio Free Asia, and subsequently its Uyghur branch, has brought “deep despair.” According to Hoja, the decision comes at a time when the Chinese government has intensified its genocide against the Uyghur people and its propaganda efforts to normalize it. Hoja added that the US decision to close RFA is harmful to the US as well, as it would be challenging to replace the radio’s influence in reporting human rights abuses and atrocities in an extremely restricted region.

In an effort to cut federal spending, US President Donald Trump terminated federal funding for the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) in March, effectively freezing the agency that gives support to media outlets like Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe, and Voice of America. In early May, Radio Free Asia announced mass layoffs, including in its Uyghur language branch.

According to a report in 2022 by the Council on Foreign Relations, more than a million Muslims, predominantly Turkic-speaking, have been sent to “reeducation camps” since 2017, and the region has faced “intense surveillance, forced labor, and involuntary sterilizations.”

In 2021, then-Secretary of State of the US Mike Pompeo stated that the US State Department had determined that a genocide was happening against the Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Pompeo added that the Chinese government was attempting to “destroy Uyghurs” through forced assimilation and “eventual erasure.”

The post Rights group urges US Congress to restore Radio Free Asia Uyghur service appeared first on JURIST - News.

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