Reported widely in the fannish press this morning, an organization of authors based in Canada – “Justice for All Canada”, released an open letter signed by numerous SF authors and related organizations, calling for the cancellation of the Chengdu 2023 Worldcon in China.
(Amazing Stories has been beating this gong almost from the beginning of the announcement of the bid. Go here for additional background information.)
Although based in Canada, the Cherngdu GoH, Canadian author Robert J. Sawyer, is not among the signatories.
We’ll have our own commentary on this in a day or so. Meanwhile, here is the complete text: (A link is included so that you may add your name to the list. Amazing Stories did.)
To Members of the WorldCon Site Selection, WorldCon Community and Voters:
We the undersigned authors, human rights organizations, and members of the science fiction and fantasy community are asking you to revoke the 2023 WorldCon bid to Chengdu, China.
We do so in protest of serious and ongoing human rights violations taking place in the Uyghur region of China, formally labelled by the Chinese government as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). These human rights violations amount to atrocity crimes, as documented by Human Rights Watch, and numerous other human rights organizations, and as per the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The parliaments of Japan, France, UK, Belgium, Czech Republic, Canada, Lithuania and the Netherlands, along with the United States State Department, consider these crimes to have met the threshold of genocide. We will elaborate on these crimes below.
To cite the April 19, 2021 Human Rights Watch report on the oppression of China’s Uyghur population, entitled “Break Their Lineage, Break Their Roots”:
“Crimes against humanity are considered among the gravest human rights abuses under international law. The specific crimes against humanity documented in this report include imprisonment or other deprivation of liberty in violation of international law; persecution of an identifiable ethnic or religious group; enforced disappearance; torture; murder; and alleged inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to mental or physical health, notably forced labor and sexual violence.”
While the Chinese government’s crimes against Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples are not new, they have accelerated since 2014, when the Chinese government launched the “Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism” in the Uyghur homeland. According to the United Nation and Human Rights Watch, “As many as a million people have been arbitrarily detained in 300 to 400 facilities, which include “political education” camps, pretrial detention centers, and prisons. Courts have handed down harsh prison sentences without due process…”. The Uyghur Tribunal (independent People’s Tribunal led by Sir Geoffrey Nice in London) concluded based on 18 months of assessment of evidence, that crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity were committed by the Chinese government against the Uyghurs and other Turkic people.
In its latest White Paper, the Government of China acknowledged that between 2014-2019, an average of 1.29 million people in the region per year have gone through “Vocational Training,” a term used to describe detention facilities.
Reports have also documented that within the concentration camps, millions of Uyghurs are subjected to severe physical, sexual, and mental torture, as well as forced labour on a wide scale. Uyghur Muslims have been forced to denounce their religious practices; China’s government has criminalized Islamic practices, destroyed mosques, shrines, and graveyards, banned Uyghur language, separated families from their children, and created a digital Gulag to eradicate Uyghur identity.
A recent report detailed a systematic campaign of forced sterilization and forced abortion of Uyghur women, alongside appalling measures deployed to prevent the birth of the Uyghur population. Forced sterilization and the transfer of children from their communities constitute acts of genocide under Article II of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Numerous genocide and atrocity prevention organizations have also expressed their grave concerns at crimes against humanity and genocidal measures taken against Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim populations.
Recently leaked internal Chinese government documents document the inner workings and extent of detention facilities (concentration camps) and forced labor schemes. These leaks include Operating Manuals for the Mass Internment and Surveillance systems, a comprehensive logbook and more than 400 pages of other internal papers, including speeches from senior officials, providing an inside look at the implementation of genocidal measures against the Uyghur population.
In addition, enforced separation of Uyghur children from their parents has reached an unprecedented level. The Government of China has not disclosed the whereabouts of these children and has blocked access to their families. The number of disappeared Uyghur children is estimated at 880,000 from 2019. Furthermore, according to witness accounts and testimonies, frequent deaths, physical and mental torture, enforced disappearances, mass rape, and enforced marriage of Uyghur girls to Han Chinese, have become widespread in the region.
As science fiction and fantasy authors, we imagine brave new worlds in our fiction. We challenge power, authority and the status quo, where grave injustices may be perpetrated without accountability or reparation. We write underdogs and outsiders who disrupt power structures and overthrow cruel overlords. So often, our characters make unthinkable sacrifices, and undertake impossible quests to bring down tyrants and oppressive regimes. They do so for a chance at a just and more inclusive future, where their people no longer suffer violence and discrimination.
The human rights atrocities committed by the government of China against the Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim populations are in total opposition to everything we as a community stand for. We cannot, in good conscience, celebrate the achievements of the best and brightest in our field, against a backdrop of catastrophic human suffering. To participate in WorldCon in Chengdu, China, would be equivalent to giving WorldCon’s imprimatur to genocide and to crimes against humanity.
Therefore, we ask, that in solidarity with the Uyghur and Turkic peoples suffering ongoing atrocity crimes, that the site allocation bid for WorldCon 2023 be changed to any other reasonable contender. We hope that as a community that strongly advocates for human rights, you will take the appropriate action now that you are aware of the government of China’s actions. Given the egregious human rights violations that are ongoing in the Uyghur region, we are urgently asking the organizers of WorldCon 2023 to join us in condemning these violations by revoking the 2023 site allocation bid to Chengdu, China. This is not a protest against the citizens of China, with whom we stand in solidarity, but rather against a government that is committing crimes against humanity, as documented above.
Please note, also, that many members of our community had to prioritize the safety of their families in China, and thus could not publicly add their names. This is one of many reasons our petition is urgent.
We look forward to a positive response.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned Authors and Organizations
The undersigned authors, civil society and human rights groups:
<Signatories will be populated below. Click here to add your name or group:
https://forms.gle/CwxLrfqEBosH4MMA7
Authors:
Ausma Zehanat Khan, author of BLOODPRINT
Sarah Mughal Rana, SFF author and officer of The Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project
N.K. Jemisin, author of THE BROKEN EARTH TRILOGY
Angie Thomas, author of THE HATE U GIVE and ON THE COME UP
Martha Wells, author of THE MURDERBOT DIARIES
Willow Wilson, author of ALIF THE UNSEEN and MS. MARVEL
S.A Chakraborty, author of CITY OF BRASS
Jeannette Ng, author UNDER THE PENDULUM SUN
Xiran Jay Zhao, author of IRON WIDOW
Tochi Onyebuchi, author of RIOT BABY and GOLIATH
Zoraida Córdova, author of THE INHERITANCE OF ORQUIDEA DIVINA and STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
L.D. Lewis, author, editor, Publisher at FIRESIDE MAGAZINE, Project Manager FIYAH Literary Magazine, Director FIYAHCON
Tahir Hamut Izgil, Uyghur poet of DISTANCE AND OTHER POEMS and author of article ONE BY ONE, MY FRIENDS WERE SENT TO THE CAMPS
Tahir Imin, writer, translator and founder of UYGHUR TIMES
Uighur Abdulla, author of Uyghur works
Tempest Bradford, author, educator, and activist
Tracy Deonn, author of LEGENDBORN
Sona Charaipotra, author of SYMPTOMS OF A HEARTBREAK
Roseanne Brown, author of A SONG OF WRAITHS AND RUIN & A BLACK PANTHER GRAPHIC NOVEL
Bethany C. Morrow, author of A SONG BELOW WATER and SO MANY BEGINNINGS
J Elle, author of WINGS OF EBONY
Usman T. Malik, author of MIDNIGHT DOORWAYS
Isabel Cañas, author of THE HACIENDA
Uzma Jalaluddin, author of AYESHA AT LAST
N.H. Senzai, author of SHOOTING KABUL
Tasha Suri, author of THE JASMINE THRONE
Anna Smith Spark, author of THE COURT OF BROKEN KNIVES
Lauren Blackwood, author of WITHIN THESE WICKED WALLS
Hannah Whitten, author of FOR THE WOLF
Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow, author of YOUR NAME IS A SONG and ONCE UPON AN EID
Intisar Khanani, author of THORN
Didi Chanoch, SFF translator
June Hur, author of THE SILENCE OF BONES
Susannah Aziz, author of HALAL HOT DOG
Ava Reid, author of THE WOLF AND THE WOODSMAN
Aamna Qureshi, author of THE LADY OR THE LION
Jessica & Jacinta, authors of LUNAR BOY
Ciannon Smart, author of WITCHES STEEPED IN GOLD
Mike Brooks, author of THE BLACK COAST
Vaishnavi Patel, author of KAIKEYI
N.E. Davenport, author of THE BLOOD TRIALS
S.B. Divya, author of MACHINEHOOD
Alechia Dow, author of THE SOUND OF STARS
Saara El-Arifi, author of THE FINAL STRIFE
EK Johnston, author of AHSOKA
Claire Holroyde, author of THE EFFORT
Farah Naz Rishi, author of HOPE YOU GET THIS MESSAGE
M.O. Yuksel, author of IN MY MOSQUE
Linden A. Lewis, author of THE FIRST SISTER
Deborah Falaye, author of BLOOD SCION
Kat Howard, author of AN UNKINDNESS OF MAGICIANS
Greta Kelly, author of THE FROZEN CROWN
George Jreije, author of SHAD HADID AND THE ALCHEMISTS OF ALEXANDRIA
M.T. Khan, author of NURA AND THE IMMORTAL PALACE
Josh Monken, host of CONTRIBUTE A VERSE podcast
Austin Yoshino, FRESH PULP MAGAZINE
Liselle Sambury, author of BLOOD LIKE MAGIC
London Shah, author of THE LIGHT AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD
Nafiza Azad, author of THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME
Natasha Khan Kazi, author of MOON’S RAMADAN
Rowenna Miller, author of THE UNRAVELED KINGDOM series
Tracy Banghart, author of GRACE AND FURY
Kat Dunn, author of DANGEROUS REMEDY
Victor Manibo, author of THE SLEEPLESS
Chelsea Abdullah, author of THE STARDUST THIEF
Tej Turner, author of BLOODSWORN and THE JANUS CYCLE
Tanvi Berwah, author of MONSTERS BORN AND MADE
Shirin Shamsi, author of THE GIRL WHO DARED
Joanne Hall, author of THE ART OF FORGETTING
SHENG Xue, Chinese-Canadian author, poet, and human rights activist
Organizations:
World Uyghur Congress
Uyghur Human Rights Project
Uyghur Revival Association
The Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project
Uyghur Times
Justice for All Canada
Stop Uyghur Genocide Canada
International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China
Boston Uyghur Association
Canadian In Support of Refugees In Dire Need
NG Medical PC
Uyghur Hjelp Project
Canadians in Support of Refugees in Dire Need
