Uyghur Women and Human Rights Rebiya Kadeer, President, World Uyghur Congress Human Rights Council Forum on Minority Issues Fourth session Geneva, 29-30 November 2011 Good morning/afternoon/evening. Uyghur women in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), are facing a number of challenges that undermine their individual and collective human rights. As with women in other areas of the world, Uyghur women are subjected to the indignities of human trafficking and to the deprivations of poverty; however, Uyghur women are also subjected to rights abuses that are specific to their situation. While the Chinese government recruits Han Chinese from other parts of the People's Republic of China to take jobs in the XUAR, the authorities use intimidation, threats, and deception to recruit Uyghurs to participate in a labor transfer program to urban factories in eastern China. The government focuses its aggressive recruitment efforts primarily on young, marriage-age Uyghur women and girls from predominantly Uyghur areas such as southern Xinjiang, which is a bastion of Uyghur culture and tradition. Thousands of Uyghur women and young girls have been removed from their communities and families in the Uyghur region and placed into abusive and poor working conditions in eastern China under this program. Methods used by local authorities to force Uyghurs, particularly young Uyghur women and girls, to participate have included: threatening families with steep fines if they fail to send family members to join the program; threatening farmers with the confiscation of their farmlands and the destruction of their homes if they refuse to allow their daughters to participate; and threatening young women with the confiscation of their resident registration cards and denial of marriage certificates if they choose not to join. Local authorities have also used deception and empty promises to recruit participants. They have promised alluring salaries and transportation to the factories. However, many participants report facing extremely oppressive working conditions and living arrangements in eastern China, including: physical beatings within the factories; coercion to work when sick and longer hours than are stipulated in the employment contracts; salaries withheld for months as "deposits", garnished wages, and salary deductions for costs that it was agreed would be paid by others, such as transportation to the factory;