Credit: Amnesty International Luxembourg
On Monday 3 February 2020, Amnesty International Luxembourg organised a solidarity action and a petition ceremony in front of the Chinese Embassy in Luxembourg to draw attention to the fate of a missing young Uighur.
According to Amnesty International, Yiliyasijiang Rehema disappeared during his studies in Egypt in July 2017, on the orders of the Chinese authorities.
Nearly 900 people in Luxembourg mobilised for him as part of the Amnesty International letter marathon which took place in the last weeks of 2019. During yesterday's action, the director of the NGO's Luxembourg branch, Nathalie Bollen, delivered the petitions and letters to demand the release of Yiliyasijiang Reheman to the embassy.
Nathalie Bollen explained: "Yiliyasijiang Reheman was reported missing while studying in Egypt. At that time, Yiliyasijiang Reheman and his wife Mairinisha Abuduaini were expecting their second child. That was two years ago. Today, we are carrying out an act of solidarity with Yiliyasijiang Reheman. Through lanterns and the attached solidarity cards that the citizens of Luxembourg have written, we want to show that he and his family are not alone".
Like Yiliyasijiang Reheman, more than a million people belonging to Muslim minorities in the Uighur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, in the far northwest of China, are reportedly locked up in "political re-education camps". According to Amnesty International, the country is waging an increasingly intense campaign of mass internment, political indoctrination and forced cultural assimilation against these minorities.
It is in this context that Amnesty International has called on the Chinese authorities to close these camps, reveal the whereabouts of interned persons and ensure that they can see their relatives and a lawyer of their choice while in detention.
