Side Event at the UN in Geneva (March 18): Panel on the human rights situation in China

As part of the current session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) organizing a Side Event on the situation of persecuted communities in China. Considering the seriousness of the crimes committed by the Chinese government, the human rights organization is calling for the appointment of a UN Special Rapporteur for China. 

The panel will consist of the human rights activist Lebin Ding, the envoy of the Dalai Lama in Geneva, Thinlay Chukki, the Uyghur Dolkun Isa, and the Kazakh Erbakit Otarbay, who survived the reeducation camps in Xinjiang / East Turkestan. You are cordially invited:

Thursday, March 18, 2025

from 3 to 4 pm

Palais des Nations in Geneva, Room XXV

From exile in Germany, human rights activist Lebin Ding is fighting against the persecution of the Falun Gong practitioners in China and for the release of his father Yuande Ding, who was illegally imprisoned in China. The tea grower was arrested on December 15, 2023, because of his commitment to the Falun Gong movement – and then sentenced to three years in prison in connection with a fine of approximately 2,000 Euros. During a house search, the Chinese state security had found books and materials on the actual circumstances of the persecution of the Falun Gong movement. Since March 20, 2024, he has been illegally imprisoned in the province of Shandong – and the EU Parliament passed Resolution (2024/2504(RSP)) to call for his immediate release.

Thinlay Chukki from Tibet is the Dalai Lama’s Envoy in Geneva. Since he escaped from Tibet in March 1959, the Dalai Lama has been living in exile in India. Over the last few years, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has been targeting the younger generation of Tibetans – as it so far failed to sever the ties between the six million Tibetans and the 14th Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism, and Tibetan culture. Tibetan children are separated from their families and sent to compulsory boarding schools. According to reports, children as young as four are indoctrinated to identify with the ideology of the CPC.

The Uyghur Dolkun Isa, former President of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), and the Kazakh Erbakit Otarbay, who survived the reeducation camps in East Turkestan, will report on the persecution of the Uyghurs and the Kazakh people in East Turkestan. Currently, the state boarding school system for Uyghur children whose parents were abducted by the Chinese state is being expanded. Following a wave of imprisonments in 2017, the Chinese state had established so-called “Little Angel”-schools to indoctrinate children whose parents were sent to reeducation camps or prisons. The Chinese authorities, which are also responsible for the internment of the parents, are treating the children as orphans. In the boarding schools, which are guarded by security forces, the children are increasingly subjected to forced Sinicization.

Note: Accreditation is required to participate in the Side Event.