Introduction

Good morning, my name is Ashaal Sajid from 8-C as many of you may already know, and today I will be talking
about Uyghur Muslims and what is happening to them in China. But first who are Uyghurs?

The Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group originating from the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghurs live
in Xinjiang and are recognized as natives to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. There are about 12
million Uyghurs which make up for less then half of the autonomous region, and are mostly made up of Muslims
and they speak their own language, which is similar to Turkish.

The Chinese government has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against these Uyghurs and other
ethnic and religious minorities that is often characterized as cultural or ethnic genocide. Since 2014, the Chinese
government, under the administration of a General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has pursued
policies that imprisoned more than an estimated one million Turkic Muslims in internment camps without any legal
process. Operations from 2016 to 2021 were led by by another CCP Secretary, who dramatically increased the
scale and scope of the camps. This is the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War
II. Experts estimate that, since 2017, sixteen thousand mosques have been razed or damaged, and hundreds of
thousands of children have been forcibly separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools.

The reason they do all of this is because they say that it is an attempt at stopping terrorism. China denies all
allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang. In response to the Xinjiang Police Files, China's foreign ministry
spokesman said Xinjiang enjoyed stability and prosperity and the residents were living happy, fulfilled lives. China
even went as far as to officially call the internment camps "vocational education and training centers."

China is trying so hard to cover all of this up but it is almost impossible to cover up such crimes against billions of
humans. Hackers leaked thousands of photos and videos and there is nothing China can do to hide this. They can't
hide the fact that they forced labor and sterilization or hide the fact that they are pushing their political views down
these Uyghur's throats and ill-treating them severely. But most of the population can't do anything about it rather
then protest since China has so many countries wrapped around it's little finger with full diplomatic relations with
178 out of 193 UN member states . Thank you.