NGO appeal to Chancellor Scholz

“In the course of his visit to China, Chancellor Olaf Scholz should demand the release of the more than 7,000 political prisoners and – publicly – find clear words of support for those whose languages and cultures are currently threatened with extinction,” demanded Hanno Schedler, China expert at the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), in Göttingen on Wednesday. Together with other human rights organizations, the STP sent an open appeal to Scholz, who will begin his state visit to China on Saturday. 
In the letter, Scholz is urged to emphatically confront the Chinese government with the topic of the human rights violations in Tibet, East Turkestan, Hong Kong, Southern Mongolia, and China. Further, the undersigned human rights organizations – the Society for Threatened Peoples, the World Uyghur Congress, International Campaign for Tibet, Freiheit für Hong Kong e.V., and Tibet Initiative Deutschland – demanded him to advocate for the rights of the people who fled to Germany due to repression from the Communist Party of China, 
Schedler warned that the situation for human rights defenders is currently more difficult than ever. “We are calling on Chancellor Scholz to use his visit to advocate on behalf of legal expert Xu Zhiyong, lawyer Ding Jiaxi, as well as human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan, who have been unlawfully imprisoned since 2023. Their cases are representative of many others.” The Dui Hua Foundation, which has long been advocating for political prisoners, estimates that there are currently over 7,300 political prisoners.
The complete appeal can be found here.