The Uyghur Crisis in China: Adversity, Advocacy, Activism

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A panel of experts will discuss the ongoing human rights crisis in Xinjiang and the challenges faced by the Uyghur people through the lenses of history, international relations, and social justice advocacy.

Jessica Batke is a Senior Editor for ChinaFile. She is an expert on China’s domestic political and social affairs, and served as the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research Analyst for nearly eight years prior to joining ChinaFile. In 2016, she was a Visiting Academic Fellow at MERICS in Berlin, where she published papers on Chinese leadership politics and created databases to catalogue hard-to-find, high-level Chinese policy documents and details about policy advisory groups. She is proficient in Mandarin.

Darren Byler received his Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington in 2018. His research focuses on Uighur dispossession, culture work, and securitization in the city of Urumchi, the capital of Xinjiang. He has published research articles in Contemporary Islam, Central Asian Survey, and the Journal of Chinese Contemporary Art, and has contributed essays to volumes on ethnography of Islam in China, transnational Chinese cinema, and travel and representation. He also writes and curates the digital humanities art and politics repository The Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia.

Nury A. Turkel is an attorney in Washington, D.C. specializing in regulatory compliance, with a focus on anti-bribery investigation and enforcement, global compliance, litigation, and aviation. In addition to his law practice, Mr. Turkel serves as Chair of the Board for the Uyghur Human Rights Project, a documentation-based advocacy organization that he co-founded in 2004. Mr. Turkel also served as president of the Uyghur American Association from 2004 to 2006. Mr. Turkel has testified before the U.S. Congress and given presentations at foreign policy forums in the U.S. and internationally.

Sponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies, Program on Central Asia, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Islamic Studies, The Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law