“Is this a UN for China, or is this a UN for the world?”

CUS Press Release

For Immediate Release

November 25, 2025

Contact@Uyghurstudy.org

Uyghurstudy.org

Speaking at the United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights held in Geneva on November 24–26, 2025, Abdulhakim Idris, Executive Director of the Center for Uyghur Studies, sharply criticized the panelists’ complete disregard for modern slavery and the collective human rights violations in East Turkistan. Idris took the floor during the panel titled “Human Rights and Platform Work in the Asia-Pacific: Harnessing the Digital Shift” held on Tuesday, November 25, and raised a critical question before the international community. He asked, “Is this a UN for China, or is this a UN for the world?” The Chinese delegation, which was expected to respond, ignored the truth as usual.

Idris posed this question after the panelists failed to mention the grave human rights abuses in the Uyghur Region. He stated:

“I am Uyghur; I come from the Uyghur Region. Today, in our region, we have modern slavery. More than 3.3 million people have been transferred to forced labor, and more than 40 percent of our land has been confiscated by the Chinese Communist government. I am surprised that none of the panelists here mentioned this topic. Why? Is this a UN for China, or is this a UN for the world?”

In response to this striking intervention, representatives of Beijing dismissed the facts highlighted by Idris and instead repeated the usual claims about China’s territorial integrity. They could not address the realities of forced labor or the confiscation of Uyghur lands. They reiterated only that they reject any statement that might “discredit China.”

The forced labor system in the Uyghur homeland is documented extensively by international researchers, human rights organizations, and journalists. These reports reveal that millions of Uyghurs are compelled to work under threats, surveillance, political repression, and family separation as part of China’s forced labor schemes integrated with its mass detention system. Several international initiatives, including the U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, confirm that this system is a sweeping, state-orchestrated human rights violation. Likewise, independent academic analyses and field research demonstrate that much of the Uyghur population’s farmland has been transferred to the state or Han settlers, villages have been emptied, and Uyghurs have been uprooted through forced labor programs and resettlement policies.

Despite all these documented facts, the United Nations mechanisms appear unable, or unwilling, to place the issue on the agenda due to China’s political and economic pressure. The 2022 report by the UN Human Rights Office concluded that China may have committed crimes against humanity in the Uyghur Region, yet even the vote to discuss this report at the UN Human Rights Council was blocked due to Beijing’s diplomatic influence. This reflects a profound double standard that contradicts the UN’s mission to defend universal human rights and undermines the credibility of the international system.

As the Center for Uyghur Studies, we remind the international community of the question raised by Abdulhakim Idris: Is the United Nations truly the voice of all humanity, or is it becoming an institution operating under the influence of powerful states? Mass detentions, forced labor, religious and cultural restrictions, land seizures, family separations, the removal of children, coercive assimilation in boarding schools, and identity destruction through digital surveillance constitute elements of genocide. In light of these undeniable realities, the silence of UN panels is unacceptable.