Agenda:
6:45 pm (MT)
Davos in the Desert Meeting
7:00 pm (MT)
The Plight of the Uyghurs
Abdulhakim Idris, Executive Director, Center for Uyghur Studies
Muetter Iliqud, Human Rights Lawyer, Uyghur Transitional Justice Database
8:30 pm
Adjournment
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the Chinese government has reportedly arbitrarily detained more than a million Muslims in reeducation camps since 2017.
Most of the people who have been detained are Uyghur, a predominantly Turkic-speaking ethnic group primarily in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang. Beyond the detentions, Uyghurs in the region have been subjected to intense surveillance, forced labor, and involuntary sterilizations, among other rights abuses.
Reuters journalists, observing satellite imagery, found that thirty-nine of the camps almost tripled in size between April 2017 and August 2018; they covered a total area roughly the size of 140 soccer fields. Researchers at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute identified more than 380 suspected detention facilities using satellite images. The Associated Press found that in one county in Xinjiang, an estimated one in twenty-five people had been sentenced to prison on terrorism-related charges, all of them Uyghurs.
Davos in the Desert
Monday, February 12, 2024
6:45 pm – 8:30 pm (Mountain Time)
Virtual Event
The Plight of the Uyghurs with Muetter Iliqud
Featured Speaker
Muetter Iliqud
Muetter Iliqud is a human rights lawyer, writer, and researcher at the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database (UTJD), based in Norway. The UTJD is an ongoing project that focuses on the registration of the disappeared and extrajudicially interned Uyghurs and other Turkic people in China. The UTJD project was founded by the Norwegian Uyghur Committee (NUC) in 2018. Muetter has served as the head of communications for the NUC and as a project analyst for the UTJD since 2020.
Muetter’s recent work at the UTJD has included testimony collection, data gathering, and data analysis, as well as authoring books and reports about the current Uyghur Genocide. Over the past three years, Muetter has been at the forefront of the Uyghur rights campaigns, documenting and reporting on cases of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, transnational repression, torture, and sexual violence. Muetter effectively communicates these findings with civil society institutions, government bodies, as well as the United Nations and the European Union.
The Plight of the Uyghurs – Speaker: Abdulhakim Idris
About: Abdulhakim Idris
Abdulhakim Idris is the Executive Director of the Center for Uyghur Studies, a Washington D.C. – based think tank. He is the author of the book “Menace: China’s Colonization of the Islamic World & Uyghur Genocide”, which is published in Arabic, English, Indonesian, and Turkish.
Idris was born in the southern city of Hotan in East Turkistan in 1968. He was educated in Islamic studies and Arabic language at the Islamic schools (Madrasa) in Hotan before leaving his hometown in 1986 to study Islam in Egypt at Al-Azhar University. After he studied in Cairo, he settled in Munich, Germany, in 1990 as one of the first Uyghurs to seek asylum in Europe. He studied Industrial Management at the Deutsche Angestellten-Akademie (DAA) in Munich.
Idris is one of the founding members of the East Turkistan Union in Europe, first established in 1991 in Germany as the first Uyghur organization in Europe. Mr. Idris also co-founded the World Uyghur Youth Congress (WUYC) in 1996 and the East Turkistan National Congress in 1999. He was the Treasurer and Chairman of the Executive Committee for the World Uyghur Youth Congress. In 2004, Mr. Idris and a dozen other Uyghur advocates in the diaspora co-founded the World Uyghur Congress (WUC). From 2004 to 2021, Idris has served in several positions including as Treasurer, Vice-Chairman of the Executive Committee, Director of the Refugee Center, and Inspector General of the WUC. Additionally, he served as one of the Board of Directors for the Uyghur American Association in Washington DC after he moved to the United States from Germany in 2009. In 2017, Mr. Idris and his wife Rushan Abbas founded the non-profit organization Campaign for Uyghurs.
Idris has become a prominent voice for the Uyghur people. he continues his struggle to stop the Uyghur Genocide by publishing articles and participating in various conferences both in America and abroad. He was summoned as an expert witness in the Uyghur Tribunal held in London, the UK in September of 2021, which concluded that China had committed crimes against humanity and Genocide against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Turkic Muslims. He is especially focused on cultivating support from the Islamic world to protect the people of East Turkistan and to raise awareness of the propaganda efforts of the CCP.
Idris currently lives in Virginia. He speaks English, German, Arabic, Turkish and Uyghur.
Davos in the Desert Spotlight Event
Past Attending Dignitaries
Julie Willoughby
Arizona State Representative
District 13
Barbara Parker
Arizona State Representative
District 10
Katarina White
Miss Mesa
Jim O’Connor
Chairman
Arizona Corporation Commission
Justine Wadsack
Arizona State Senate
District 17
Laurin Hendrix
Arizona State Legislator
District 14
David Wanetick
CEO
Davos in the Desert
Rodney Glassman
Attorney & Air Force Veteran
Clint Bolick
Chief Justice
Arizona Supreme Court
Frank Carroll
Arizona State Senate
District 28
Leo Biasiucci
Majority Leader
Arizona House of Representatives
Legislative District 30
Paul Gosar
United States Congressman
Arizona, District 9
Shawwna Bolick
Arizona State Senator
District 2
Paul Marsh
Arizona State Mine Inspector
Danielle Skranak
Miss Gilbert, 2020-2021
Rabbi Mendy Deitsch
Pollack Chabad Center for Jewish Life
Networking Opportunities
You will have more than two hours to network with Arizona’s most successful professionals.
Davos in the Desert events are great opportunities to meet senior executives in an array of industries. At our recent events, we had senior executives/business owners from the semiconductor, electronics, life sciences, medical device, mining, hospitality, retail, real estate development, construction, software, agriculture, professional sports and professional investment industries. We typically also attract lawyers, accountants and investment bankers.