Day: August 11, 2026

Uyghur campaign – day 11


Latest action in relation to the persecution of the Uyghurs

August 2026

Today’s action is a little bit different, as we will focus on issues closer to home rather than exclusively on the rights of the Uyghurs.  We are asking you to sign the Amnesty petition to ‘protect the protest’ – something that we feel is ultimately essential to the future of all human rights campaigning. 

In some of our recent posts, we have started to include issues concerning the UK with successive attempts by governments to clamp down on unwelcome protests. In the UK, new laws are constraining our ability protest peacefully, which is an attack on our political rights. It risks creating a precedent and mark the beginning of more infringements on our ability to campaign on human rights. The UK is not of course in the same league as China where repression and stifling of rights is on a massive scale.

However, governments are dilatory about climate actions, are determined to assist Israel overtly and covertly in their violence, and are happy to support and allow arms sales to a wide variety of obnoxious regimes with poor human rights records. Voluble protests against these actions are unwelcome.

We want to protect our ability to run campaigns such as this one on the Uyghurs. In the end, protecting our political rights means protecting the future work we will do for human rights globally. The current laws that impact our ability to protest peacefully, which infringes not only on basic human rights to assembly, association, and expression (Articles 10 and 11, Human Rights Act), also creates nearly 7,000 climate protesters were arrested in the UK between 2019 and mid-2025.

Since 2021, the government has proposed four different anti-protest laws in four years. Police have arrested 3,300 people for peaceful protest against the proscription of Palestine Action. The actual prosecution of peaceful protesters in the UK threatens our ability to raise our voices for human rights around the world. It is also an infringement on political rights that limits a human rights response in any instance of further infringement.

For the health of our human rights futures (and therefore, our ability to campaign for others) please sign this petition: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/issues/authoritarianism/protect-the-protest/

Although this is not directly related to the Uyghurs as part of the Uyghur Solidarity Month, we did suggest in our last post on this topic an action to speak to a friend or colleague.

Thought of subscribing?

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Risks of University Partnerships with Arms Firms and Israel


Report by Southampton University into tensions and risks in dealing with Israel and Palestine

August 2026

The latest edition of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade’s News (Issue 277, Summer 2026) contains an article discussing links with universities and arms companies in the context of relations with Israel and Palestine. The report Aligning Policy with Practice: Tensions and Risks in the Context of Israel and Palestine, February 2026 analyses these tensions in relation to Southampton but it is clear the issues apply to many universities in the UK. The full report can be accessed here. It is the product of work carried out by the Palestinian Solidarity Network in the University (pictured) and the lead author is Irene Ruiz Espejo.

Essentially, the report analyses the various principles which the University has concerning transparency, sustainability, ethics and EDI and matches that against what happens, the links they have with arms firms and their support for research, and also the links with Israeli universities. They suggest that sometimes matters of governance, partnerships and approaches to free speech can exert a chilling effect as has been seen at other academic institutions.

Risks

They identify several risks: legal, financial, reputational and wellbeing in the report. Official communications do not reference the historical and legal realities of military occupation in Gaza, settler colonialism on the West Bank, apartheid, or the longstanding siege of Gaza. They also do not engage with international legal developments and findings, including United Nations and international and Israeli civil society organisations, which have raised serious concerns that Israel’s conduct in Gaza may amount to grave breaches of international law, including acts that violate the Genocide Convention.

In addition, University statements do not situate events in Gaza within the wider regional context of Israeli military aggression, including the bombing of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Qatar, and Iran, which have resulted in additional civilian deaths and escalating regional and global instability. Instead, communications tend to frame events primarily as a bilateral conflict and to address Palestinian deaths, displacement, and civilian harm largely through the language of humanitarian crisis.

This framing obscures a central and well-documented reality: the “conflict” is characterised by profound asymmetries in power, control, and vulnerability, including Israel’s effective control over borders, airspace, and key conditions of civilian survival in Gaza, including access to humanitarian aid. In this context, large-scale civilian harm is not only the outcome war, but it is shaped by Israel’s political and military decisions that have driven mass displacement, civilian targeting, severe restrictions on essential supplies, the use of starvation as a method of war , bombardment, and the destruction of critical civilian infrastructure in Gaza, including all twelve universities.

Power of money

They maintain this bias is not accidental but managed, where money and and power repeatedly take precedence over stated values. Students and staff who raise concerns about arms partnerships, or who engage in Palestinian solidarity, face ‘scrutiny, marginalisation or silencing’ – a direct threat to freedom of speech.

Money has become an existential issue for universities and many are struggling. The drop in foreign students has been a severe blow. The suggestion, implicit in the report, that the desire to secure research funding from arms firms has led to threat to their core values. Links to Israeli universities are not inherently wrong but the nature of the research might be.

The CAAT piece ends “our report is an attempt to interrupt that silence resisting erasure – of lives, of knowledge and our ability to name what is happening requires more than critique. It requires cultivating the capacity to see clearly even when language obscures: to think critically even when institutions reward compliance and to remain connected to our sheared humanity, to people, to place and to the consequences of what is doe with our knowledge our research and our labour”.

Some content from the report.

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Obituary: Daphne White


Long standing member of the local group. Born 1933 – died 2026

We are sad to record the death of Daphne White who was a stalwart member of the Salisbury group who died on 19th July. Her funeral was held today 11 August at Salisbury crematorium attended by relatives, friends and former pupils.

Daphne was of the generation who lived their early lives through the war years, years of hardship and making do and mending. An evacuee from Portsmouth came to stay with the family and came to be almost a sister to her. After St Marks Junior School she went to South Wilts Grammar School. She was brought up in a Methodist family and after school, she attended a Methodist Teacher Training college in Scotland. She became a teacher of geography.

She travelled widely despite her dislike of flying working for a while in Cyprus. She returned and taught for a while at Durrington Secondary Modern and then became Deputy Head of Wilton Middle School before retiring.

It was this interest in the world and geography which led her to take an interest in human affairs and thence to become active in Amnesty International, both in the national organisation and with the local group. She took great interest in the plight of others including that of political prisoners. Amnesty became a great passion for her and she was a regular attendee at the monthly group meetings. One prisoner of conscience Daphne worked on was Dr Raul Lombardi who, with his family, came to visit Salisbury following his release. Work with PoCs is a key element of Amnesty’s work. Daphne was the county coordinator for Peru for many years. She is bottom left in the picture (picture credit needed).

We are grateful to the celebrant, Helen George, for this extract from her celebration of Daphne’s life and her work in speaking to those who knew Daphne to describe her life story. Helen can be contacted on helenislageorge@gmail.com. We hope to add to this obituary if further material comes to light including adding a photo. So please view this as a first draft.

She will be missed.

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Uyghurs: getting the word out


Try telling a friend or neighbour about how the Uyghurs are treated

August 2026

Bringing back media and governmental attention on the Uyghurs is an essential step in ensuring that the current crisis is not simply ignored and forgotten. But these actions are only as strong as the wider support from the population. The more people know, care, and act for the Uyghurs, the stronger the influence we can have will be. That is why we are asking you today to simply talk to someone you know – a friend, a neighbour, or a colleague for example – about the Uyghur crisis.

Earlier posts will give you a flavour of the issues, the cruelty and repression these people are experiencing so we hope that with the information we have shared this far you will feel empowered to discuss the issue if in simple terms.

Nobody has all the answers to all the questions that may be asked, but creating that spark of curiosity within someone, who may learn more on their own, is so important and powerful. A simple conversation can make all the difference. You may get a response that it has little to do with us. It is sad and terrible that these things are happening but what can we do? Some points to consider:

  • You are involved. If you have cotton garments in your wardrobe, there is a 25% chance that the cotton was harvested by Uyghurs using forced labour.
  • Repression and denial of free speech is not confined to the Uyghurs. Mongolia and Tibet has also suffered and more recently Hong Kong. Britain has taken in many thousands of people fleeing the territory. There is great anxiety about immigration and considerable political and media attention to the Channel crossings. The thousands of Chinese who have come here receive little attention.
  • We discussed the new China Unity Law in our last post and this has incorporated repression and discrimination into all of China’s minorities.
  • As China becomes ever more powerful, Xi Jinping’s ambitions increase. Taiwan is in his sights and he is fomenting unrest in Japan and elsewhere in Asia
  • China is providing massive weapons assistance to Russia in its war with Ukraine. The war has resulted in many thousands of Ukrainians coming to Britain as well.
  • China is demanding a massive embassy be allowed in Britain which is almost certainly to be used for espionage it is alleged.

Although the Uyghurs may seem a long, long way away, they are but the latest victims of China’s relentless desire for power and commercial domination. The effects of this will increasingly be felt in the UK. Regrettably, it does not get the attention it deserves and governments are keen to pursue trade interests. China is said to be sensitive to criticism and claims that human rights and other matters are raised behind the scenes are to be questioned. They certainly had little or no effect in Hong Kong.

So please mention the Uyghurs to your friends and add that China is becoming ever more important in our lives and it is beginning to affect all of us.

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