Veteran activist Dolkun Isa, whose elderly parents both died in custody at the start of a Chinese mass internment campaign, has been re-elected president of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) in a vote by Uyghur diaspora delegates from 25 countries, the group said Sunday.
The return of the 54-year-old Isa to a second three-year term at the helm of the WUC, which serves as the de facto government in exile for the Uyghur diaspora, comes after years of intensifying repression in Xinjiang and rising world attention to the plight of the vast region’s 12 million Uyghurs.
Chinese policies toward the Uyghurs and fellow Turkic-speaking Muslims -- including mass internment, forced labor and coercive birth control -- have drawn accusations of genocide from rights groups and several Western nations and led to Western sanctions on top Chinese Communist Party officials in the region. read more