The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) is “concerned” a New Zealand Fulbright scholar has suffered the ignominy of dozens of classmates walking out of a US lecture theatre when she brought up Uyghur politics.
The scholar is Rizwangul NurMuhammad, one of the subjects of Stuff’s Deleted series.
She has been fighting for years for the release of her brother Mewlan, who was detained in the Chinese province of Xinjiang in 2017 for “secession”.
Mewlan was taken during his lunch break and, despite no evidence of a trial, sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment.
NurMuhammad is a NZ citizen who lives in Auckland. She is completing a Masters at Cornell University’s Institute of Public Affairs under a Fulbright scholarship.
She told Stuff that since the walkout she feels worried for her safety and let down by the Ivy League university, which has been criticised for the way it has handled the considerable fallout.
The incident has sparked a conversation about the potential influence of Chinese international student money on academic freedom, a debate that has been simmering in academia in recent years.
Tags: Çin, DoğuTürkistan, eastturkistan, genocide, killerchina, Soykırım, uyghur, uygur