fredag 21. januar 2022

Research Briefing: The Uyghur Tribunal

The Uyghur Tribunal is an unofficial body that examined claims of human rights abuses and crimes against humanity reportedly committed against the Uyghur people by China in its Xinjiang province. The Tribunal has no legal powers. Its hearings were held at Church House in London.

The Tribunal was chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, a barrister who has served as a part-time judge and worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia between 1998 and 2006 and led the prosecution of Slobodan Milošević, former President of Serbia. Members of what the Tribunal styled as a jury, included several academics specialising in fields like medicine, law and anthropology, and board members of charitable organisations.

The Tribunal started its work in September 2020, and published a judgment in December 2021. The Tribunal’s judgment (PDF) found evidence that China had detained “hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs – with some estimates well in excess of a million […] without any, or any remotely sufficient, reason and subjected [them] to acts of unconscionable cruelty, depravity and inhumanity”.