If you are a healthcare worker or medical researcher who wants to help SUG and others stop the medical abuses against Uyghur people and other Turkic groups native to the Uyghur region, then this is the page for you! It doesn’t matter whether you are a doctor, nurse, midwife, pharmacist, therapist, or whether your research is lab based, clinical, or epidemiological, we have set up the Healthcare Workers for Uyghurs campaign to help you do that.
What are the abuses?
Forced birth prevention (through sterilisation or abortion, sometimes as late as the 8th or 9th month) is targeted at 80% of Uyghur women of childbearing age. This policy, fully described in publicly available policy documents, and originating at the highest levels of Government, formed the basis for the Uyghur Tribunal’s conclusion that the Chinese government is committing genocide against the Uyghurs and other Turkic groups native to the region.
A large programme of forced organ harvesting (FOH) from prisoners of conscience and minority groups was investigated by the China Tribunal and revealed mounting evidence that healthy Uyghurs are pre-selected by routinely collected genomic surveillance data. It is estimated that 60-100, 000 victims are killed each year in the process of organ extraction, with reports of cremation thereafter.
These policies require the participation of medical staff in planning and implementation, despite their obligations under the Geneva Declaration ‘not to violate human rights, even under threat.
How has the International Medical Community reacted?
The World Medical Association (WMA) passed a resolution proposed by the British Medical Association (BMA), condemning Forced Organ Harvesting in 2016. We, together with End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC) and Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH), approached the BMA ethics committee when evidence of the other abuses came to light, following which the BMA issued a joint statement with the Academy of Royal Medical Colleges condemning all abuses. A subsequent BMJ editorial called for the international medical community to petition politicians for an independent international investigation by a reputable authority and for the Chinese Medical Association’s expulsion from the WMA. A BMA Ruling Council motion endorsed these actions and also empowered the BMA ‘to work with journals to consider refusing research submitted by those specialties from China implicated in the atrocities.’
What will Healthcare Workers for Uyghurs do?
We have launched the Healthcare Workers for Uyghurs Campaign to enable healthcare workers to support the BMA’s actions and to help us campaign for universities and learned societies to review and then suspend all research, funding and educational links with the specialities responsible for the medical abuses in China, including transplantation medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology and genomics.
We think such action, by reducing China’s opportunities to participate in international scientific and technological collaborations, frustrates their ambitions for world leadership. It may generate internal pressure for change by sending a message to their healthcare workers that if your specialty avoids unethical medical practice, you are welcome to participate fully in the international medical community, but not otherwise.
We realise the medical community are largely against sanctioning healthcare workers for their country’s political or social policies. These however are medical policies. We feel our duty to patients outweighs our duty to colleagues, even those living in a state where they are denied exercise of free will and easy access to reliable information that contradicts official versions of the truth. Others favour taking action against all specialties, but we think our selective action is pragmatic, fair and non-discriminatory.
A failure of Universities, Learned Societies and individual practitioners to review and suspend their links to specialties supporting this genocide and these crimes against humanity may place them in breach of their ethical standards and even result in them being criminally liable as aiders and abettors. As the China Tribunal concluded in 2019, “any who interact in any substantial way with the PRC, including Doctors and medical institutions, should now recognise that they are interacting with a criminal state.”
How can you get involved?
Please register your interest with us below, whether you are UK-based or not, so that you can:
- receive further information and updates, including campaign petitions and emails to MPs and Ministers, Universities and Learned Societies
- help us continue our support for the long-standing work of our colleagues in ETAC (International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China) and DAFOH (Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting).
Links for Additional Information
- Judgement of the Uyghur Tribunal
- Judgement of the Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China
- Declaration of Withdrawal of Collaboration from Doctors and Scientists in China-
- Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting
- International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC)
- Free advocacy and training courses from ETAC
- Forced organ harvesting explainer video from ETAC
- What is forced organ harvesting in China? Understanding the Evidence by Prof Wendy Rogers
- Official Correspondence to China regarding organ harvesting allegations from 12 UN Special Rapporteurs and human rights experts and summary press release
- BMA Review of Evidence of Forced Organ Harvesting and China’s falsification of data
- Forced Birth Prevention and Evidence of Government Involvement