Repression of Uyghurs persists as the world moves on; Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), April 19, 2026

 Yalkun Uluyol, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC); Repression of Uyghurs persists as the world moves on

"Yalkun Uluyol, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch, is participating in a panel discussion of the ethical and legal dilemmas at the heart of international human rights, The Attention Economy of Suffering, presented by The Ethics Centre in partnership with Human Rights Watch, on Tuesday, 21 April 2026.

Dozens of my family members, including my father, Memet Yaqup, have disappeared into China’s system of mass incarceration over the past decade simply for being Uyghurs. When international attention to our plight surged — through joint statements at the United Nations, extensive media coverage, national parliaments recognising atrocity crimes — I believed there would be enough pressure to secure the release of my loved ones. 

Yet, eight years into my father’s enforced disappearance, I still have no information about his whereabouts, health or the allegations that led to his imprisonment. Meanwhile, the world’s attention has moved on.

My father is one of the hundreds of thousands who since 2016 have suffered the Chinese government’s grave human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The Chinese authorities have subjected Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims to mass arbitrary detention, unjust imprisonments, intrusive surveillance and forced labour.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded in a landmark 2022 report that the Chinese government may have committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. That acknowledgement marked a rare moment when the Uyghur people appeared to have the world’s attention. Yet even then, China’s global influence was on full display. 

Efforts by a group of countries who tried to place Xinjiang on the formal agenda of the UN Human Rights Council were narrowly defeated after heavy pressure from Beijing. What happened read like a page taken from the Beijing playbook: intimidation of critics, the cultivation and mobilisation of allies, and a steady erosion of momentum for such criticism.

In Xinjiang, the Chinese government weaponises information about people’s everyday lives — lawful and peaceful behaviours — and uses it against them. The authorities have put mass surveillance tools in place, including one called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, to track everyone, their movements, contacts, phone use and contents, vehicle location and interaction with people abroad."

U.S. Attacked Boat With Aircraft That Looked Like a Civilian Plane; The New York Times, January 12, 2026

 Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt, John Ismay, Julian E. Barnes, Riley Mellen and Christiaan Triebert,  The New York Times; U.S. Attacked Boat With Aircraft That Looked Like a Civilian Plane

"The Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first attack on a boat that the Trump administration said was smuggling drugs, killing 11 people last September, according to officials briefed on the matter. The aircraft also carried its munitions inside the fuselage, rather than visibly under its wings, they said.

The nonmilitary appearance is significant, according to legal specialists, because the administration has argued its lethal boat attacks are lawful — not murders — because President Trump “determined” the United States is in an armed conflict with drug cartels.

But the laws of armed conflict prohibit combatants from feigning civilian status to fool adversaries into dropping their guard, then attacking and killing them. That is a war crime called “perfidy.”