By @BethanyAllenEbr: "A group of Chinese international students at Cornell University booed and left an event last week in protest after a Uyghur student spoke about her brother's detention amid the Chinese government's genocide in #Xinjiang." axios.com/chinese-studen…
During the question and answer portion of the talk, Cornell student @Rizwangul asked Slotkin why the U.S. and international community had reacted with great speed and resolve to punish Russia for invading Ukraine but had yet to ...
... levy a similar sanctions regime on the Chinese government for its genocide in Xinjiang.
NurMuhammad explained that her brother Mewlan was arrested in 2017, as Chinese authorities began mass detentions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and that she has not been able to speak with him since then.
Slotkin replied that while Americans have a long Cold War history with Russia and can understand the implications of Russian military aggression, Americans don't know much about China, and may not know much about the human rights violations in Xinjiang.
"There was audible booing and jeering going on from the Chinese students partway through her question, and during the answer they started to get up and just walked out of the room," said Pedro Fernandez, a Cornell student in the same program who was at the event.
Multiple people present at the event described the Chinese students' reaction to NurMuhammad as "jeering," "taunts," "snickering" and "booing."
About 40 Chinese students then walked out of the lecture hall, according to a video of the event viewed by Axios and interviews with people present.
"I don’t feel safe," NurMuhammad told Axios. "The walkout made me feel numb."
The message Chinese students conveyed was, "I have to stay silent because my speech and my personal experience are not welcome to be shared in that space," NurMuhammad said, adding she will continue to advocate publicly for Uyghurs.
The response by university leadership also left her feeling "unsupported," NurMuhammad said, though she said university police, the student health center and crisis services center are being very supportive.
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