The United Nations on Monday abruptly cancelled a speech by a prominent exiled Uyghur scholar and linguist barely 24 hours before he was to address a Paris conference on language technologies, he told Radio Free Asia.
In an email to Norway-based researcher Abduweli Ayup shown to RFA Uyghur, organizers provided no reason for rescinding the invitation to speak at the Language Technologies for All, or LT4ALL, conference, under the umbrella of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO.
But Ayup said the reason was likely because he questioned an earlier presenter about protections for the Uyghur language in China, where some 12 million Uyghurs live in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
He and other Uyghur activists say Beijing is trying to eradicate their mother tongue. They say it is but one aspect of Chinese efforts to “Sinicize” Uyghurs — a Turkic people who are distinct from Han Chinese — through a process of cultural assimilation.
On Feb. 12, the LT4ALL organizing committee sent Ayup a letter inviting him to serve as a chair/rapporteur for an afternoon session scheduled for Feb. 25 entitled “Education, Inclusion, Innovation” at U.N. Headquarters in Paris, France. He accepted and was added to the program.
But on Monday, Feb. 24, organizers sent him an email saying they had been “unable to secure approval” to include his presentation in the program, and that they were “informed at the last minute, and this decision is beyond our control.”
“We had hoped to find a better solution, but unfortunately, we have no other option at this time,” the letter said. “As a result, we will not be able to include your presentation in the published file or program.”
‘Threatened and disgusted’
Afterwards, in posts to the social media platform X, Ayup called the decision “disgusting.”
He suggested it was made in response to his questioning a day earlier of a presenter, who he described as “a Chinese language activist ... [that] is a gov official [who] works for [state media outlet] Hunan TV.”
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Ayup said the presenter had discussed a language museum in China during his session, after which Ayup asked him whether it contained information about the Uyghur language and whether Uyghur language activists are safe in China.
“After those two questions, I was questioned by the Chinese delegation,” he said. “I felt threatened, I felt disgusted and disappointed. I believe my presentation was cancelled because of the questions I had asked from the Chinese speaker.”
Ayup did not provide evidence in support of his claims.
But he noted that the panel he was listening to included a representative of iFLYTEK — a partially state-owned Chinese information technology company that the U.S. sanctioned in October 2019 for its alleged role in mass surveillance and human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Ayup elaborated further in a post to X, accusing UNESCO of having “welcomed the criminal [and] kicked human rights defenders out” of the conference.
“iFLYTEK is the company [that] helped [the] Chinese regime to arrest over [1] million Uyghurs,” he wrote in the post.
Family suffering
Ayup is the founder of Uyghur Hjelp, a Norway-based Uyghur advocacy and aid organization which maintains a list of detained Uyghur intellectuals.
In May 2021, RFA learned that Chinese authorities had sentenced Ayup’s brother and sister to several years in jail in Xinjiang, allegedly for failing to demonstrate loyalty to authorities as expected. Sources with knowledge of the situation, however, said that they were arrested because of his activities in exile.
The confirmation of the sentence came on the heels of an RFA report confirming that Ayup’s niece, Mihray Erkin, had died at the Yanbulaq internment camp while being investigated by state security police in Kashgar prefecture.
Ayup’s case is not the first time the U.N. has blocked a Uyghur activist from speaking at an event it organized.
In April 2017, Dolkun Isa, a founder of the exile World Uyghur Congress and member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, was forced from a forum at U.N. premises in New York by security guards without explanation.
Isa’s removal prompted a coalition of human rights groups and organizations representing minority peoples around the world to condemn the act, calling it an expression of “domination” by an unnamed U.N. member state — an apparent reference to China.
Attempts by RFA to contact UNESCO for comment on its decision to rescind Ayup’s invitation to the LT4ALL conference went unanswered by the time of publication.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.