CHINA WATCHCornell University: Chinese Students Walk Out after Uyghur Student Asks About Genocide
The campus of Cornell University offered a demonstration of the divide between Chinese authorities and the nation’s Uyghur minority, when Chinese students staged a walkout after an Uyghur student asked a speaker – Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan – about the treatmewnt of the Uyghurs by the Chinese government.
The divide between Chinese authorities and the nation’s Uyghur minority is playing out on the U.S. campus of Cornell University, where a debate is raging after a walkout by Chinese students over a Uyghur student’s remark and a Democratic representative’s response.
Democratic representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan spoke at an on-campus event hosted by Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA) on March 10. During a question-and-answer period, Uyghur student Rizwangul NurMuhammad asked why the international community seems more concerned over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine than China’s treatment of the Uyghur people, which has been described as genocide. A group of international students from China booed and walked out of the event.
William Wang, a graduate student in public administration and the president of the student group Cornell Public Affairs Society, defended the walkout, saying the students left because they felt the atmosphere was not friendly and welcoming toward them.
“Specifically, after the congresswoman’s series of xenophobic, Sinophobic, and American-exceptionalist comments,” Wang told VOA.
According to Slotkin’s March 15 posts on Twitter, she responded to NurMuhammad’s question “by pointing out what is well known about Chinese policy toward the Uyghur community: that the government has carried out imprisonment, forced labor, and forced indoctrination.”
Slotkin continued, “I take no issue whatsoever with the Chinese people or the Chinese students in the class, but I won’t dance around the human rights abuses of the Chinese Communist Party.
“Since then, the young woman who asked me the question has become the victim of bullying & intimidation by some fellow students. There’s no excuse for that behavior.”
NurMuhammad told VOA, “Uyghurs are suffering under China’s genocide for the last five years and yet are not getting enough support from the international community including the U.S., I said to representative Slotkin.
“Uyghurs in diaspora like myself have also been impacted by this genocide. I, for example, have lost my brother to this genocide that China has waged against Uyghurs.”
Guled Mire, a student from New Zealand who was also at the event, said Slotkin had barely begun responding to NurMuhammad’s question before the Chinese international students in the room stood up to walk out.
“Rizwangul asked that question among a class made up of a majority of international students from China,” Mire told VOA. “Some of them even taunted and jeered at her as they left. It clearly appeared to be a coordinated, pre-meditated initiative.”
