Has the World Turned Its Back on the Uyghurs?

For many in the West, 2020 was a year of pandemic and politics. Every day, news cycles grew more inundated with grim accounts of the global coronavirus outbreak, on the one hand, and President Donald Trump’s scorched-earth approach to his final months in office, on the other. Lost amid the chaos was the story of the ongoing ordeal of persecution suffered by the Uyghurs, an ethnic minority that has long resided on China’s northwest frontier, an autonomous region called Xinjiang. Why has the Uyghurs’ plight garnered relatively little attention worldwide? What are the forces keeping their story out of the headlines? Why do Uyghurs who manage to find refuge abroad still have difficulty speaking out and being heard? The Free Speech Project invites you to explore these questions and others at our virtual event, “Has the World Turned Its Back on the Uyghurs?”