Dear Supporter
With revelations about the extent of possible Chinese espionage in the higher echelons of British public life, this seems like a good time to remind ourselves of the horrors that China is visiting on its own citizens.
First news of campaigning success – German car-maker Volkswagen has recently announced that it is abandoning production in Xinjiang, the Chinese region with a predominantly Uyghur Muslim population which for decades has been subject to forced labour in the service of many western enterprises. Thank you to everyone – including many René Cassin supporters – who have lobbied VW on this issue over the years.
Whilst this is clearly a step in the right direction, we must continue to highlight the plight of China’s Uyghur Muslims.
In November our event The Weaponisation of Faith Against Uyghur Women, featured the testimonies of two women whose lives have been deeply affected by China’s brutality.
Huda Jawad is a Muslim feminist and co-founder of the Faith & Violence Against Women & Girls Coalition. Huda spoke on the spiritual abuse that Uyghur women are suffering.
Rahima Mahmut, Uyghur exile and friend of René Cassin, told what she describes as a ‘deeply personal story of loss, resilience and a fight for survival’. It is a difficult but important listen.
Rahima also spoke on this subject in the second of our Uyghur Forced Labour podcasts, released to mark the 76th anniversary of the Genocide Convention on 9 December. The inaugural episode of the podcast, released in September, featured René Cassin’s Mia Hasenson-Gross speaking the complicity of western fashion brands in the exploitation of Uyghur forced labour.
On Human Rights Day – 10 December, the 76th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – we focused on the need for the right to everyday essentials like food, housing and health. Bolstering these rights would ensure everybody has access to the foundations on which to build a dignified, prosperous and meaningful life.
Our namesake Monsieur René Cassin, co-author of the Universal Declaration, saw such rights as part of the essential architecture of human rights. Yet these rights, expressed in the Declaration’s Article 25 have been neglected for too long. It is an argument we made at length in our resource to help synagogues and other communities mark Human Rights Shabbat on 7 December.
The Universal Declaration and the Genocide Convention were enacted in response to the horrors of the Holocaust. Another such response, the Kindertransport of 1938 and 1939, was remembered in a moving piece, This man saved my mother’s life – then mine too, by Danny Silverstone, René Cassin’s Chair.
Speaking of how Nicholas Winton had enabled her to escape Nazi Germany as an eleven-year-old girl, he writes:
“My mother had a full life in the UK. She spent most of her life here and was very proud to be British, the country that gave her refuge”.
But he also notes:
“I doubt if my mother would have even gained entry to the UK in 2024 … Many among the current generation of asylum seekers do not have a similar experience of seeking asylum in the UK as my mother; nor are they treated as well as she was”.
After ten years at the helm of René Cassin, Danny is moving on. Early in the New Year we will announce his replacement as Chair of the Trustee Board and look back at René Cassin’s considerable achievements on his watch. We owe him a great deal.
As 2024 draws to a close, we thank you for your support, and wish you a peaceful and enjoyable holiday. And let’s all hope for a better world in 2025.
With best wishes from the René Cassin team
