Earlier this week, as devout American Catholics took to the streets of Washington to celebrate the arrival of Pope Francis, four Chinese human rights activists sat in a small, plain congressional office room on Capitol Hill.
There were neither barricades nor the glaring lights of news camera crews at the press conference hosted by China Aid, an international Christian human rights group.
Two translators were on hand to assist non-English-speaking panelists in telling their stories.
“During the Ramadan of last year, August of 2014, in the town of Yarkand [in Xinjiang region], China’s security forces broke into a house of Uyghur families and started shooting,” said Rebiya Kadeer, president of the World Uyghur Congress, via a translator. “Including a 7-year-old, 12 people were killed.”
According to Kadeer, whose flat palm tapped rhythmically against her leg throughout the event, the Uyghur people—a Muslim, Turkic ethnic minority within China—have faced increasingly violent persecution by a Chinese government that fears radical ties to extremist groups like ISIS. The Washington Post reported that, also during last year’s Ramadan holiday, Chinese authorities forced Uyghur university students to break fast.
