Central/ Southwest Asia

Washington-based Chinese Muslim exiles say that testimony from a former detainee in Xinjiang will help them convince the world that China’s repressions of minorities amount to crimes against humanity.

Ovalbek Turdakun, an ethnic Kyrgyz Christian from Xinjiang, arrived in the United States from Kyrgyzstan earlier this month after lobbying from several members of Congress.

In 2018, Turdakun spent 10 months in a Xinjiang prison camp where he says he was interrogated in shackles, psychologically and physically tortured, and kept under constant surveillance.

“I was forced to sign documents without having time to review them, formally admitting any crimes that they assigned to me,” he said at an April 13 press conference in Washington. “The more you oppose these accusations, the more you stay in a crowded cell, where some inmates must keep standing in order that others can sleep.”

Turdakun said he was then confined to house arrest for about…

European-Central Asian Regional Forum on Minority Issues to spotlight stronger rights protection for 30th anniversary

29.April.2022

GENEVA (29 April 2022) - The European-Central Asian Regional Forum will take place on 2-3 May 2022, with a focus on building stronger protection mechanisms for minorities in the region and marking the 30th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities.

UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues Fernand de Varennes and the Government of Austria will convene the Regional Forum which will be held in a hybrid format, in Vienna and online. The forum is open to the media.

“Review-Rethink-Reform is the theme of this year’s Regional Forum. The time has come to reflect on the challenges facing minorities in Europe and Central Asia, the extent their situation has evolved in the last 30 years, and what is needed to build stronger…

Ethnic minority groups are disproportionately affected by the novel coronavirus, with Black and Asian at increased risk of infection compared with white individuals, according to an analysis published in The Lancet medical journal.

About 18.7 million patients from 50 studies were included to establish the findings, the analysis said, according to a report by the Reuters news agency.

Therefore, they continued to have contact with others through work or commuting, thereby being left more exposed to infection.

They are also more likely to have lower socioeconomic status, which may increase the likelihood of living in overcrowded households or accommodation with shared facilities, the findings suggested.

Black people are twice as likely to become infected with COVID-19 as white people, and people from Asian backgrounds are one and a half times as likely, the researchers found.

The study was conducted as a review and a meta-analysis to explore the relationship between…

13. Sep. 2020

According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics(UIS),roughly 258 million children, adolescents and youth were out of school in 2018; around one-sixth of the global population of school-age children(6 to 17 years old). Even more worrying is the fact that unless urgent measures are taken, 12 million primary school age children will NEVER set foot in a school.  The gap between the world's richest and poorest countries is highlighted by the UIS(UNESCO Institute for Statistics) data. The financial condition makes the wider gap grows.

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