"Genocide leaves no room for neutrality": Public must be vocal against Uighur atrocities

25 July 2020, 15:17 | Updated: 25 July 2020, 15:19

Maajid Nawaz urges against silence on the Uighur Muslim atrocities

Maajid Nawaz said that people's silence on the CCP's atrocities committed against Uighur Muslims makes them complicit.

Maajid Nawaz was in studio after a week of silent protest and hunger strike to raise awareness for the violence committed against Uighur Muslims by the Chinese Communist Party.

He noted that China's actions against the Uighur people is an attempt to "change the world order," and "the way they are seeking to reshape is by tearing up the rulebook and reshaping it by their own rules."

Maajid listed the actions of the CCP against the Uighurs on-air. "Serious allegations of organ harvesting, half a million children missing, 13 tonnes of hair being found, and by the way, those thirteen tonnes of hair being off another half a million Uighur human beings."

"With all of this all out in the open and now known, the real question is people were scared to speak about it before, why?"

"Why the rest of us, why society wasn't speaking. I'd like everybody to think about that for a second."

GRAPHIC: Maajid Nawaz explains atrocities pushing him to hunger strike

"Genocide is a zero sum game" Maajid said. "When we say never again, we must mean it.

"We cannot pay lip service to it because genocide is a zero sum game – it leaves no room for neutrality and the reason that is the case is because genocide is fundamentally a war against humanity."

Maajid argued that nobody can justify any silence on the atrocities being committed against Uighur Muslims by the CCP. "There is no choice you can take here other than opposing genocide."

Debate was circulating on air about a banner with the slogan "white silence is violence" and Maajid used the argument to rally solidarity for Uighurs. "If that slogan was to mean anything to anyone in this country on the liberal anti-racism side of this debate, let it mean something right now."

Maajid went on to note that the Chinese government have now accepted the existence of camps housing Uighur Muslims, although "they're now using a euphemism and calling them reeducation camps. To me, they look like Stalin's gulags."