FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 1, 2026 | 10:30 AM EST
Washington, D.C.
Contact: contact@campaignforuyghurs.org
www.campaignforuyghurs.org
Campaign For Uyghurs (CFU) strongly condemns the People’s Republic of China’s new Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, which came into effect on July 1, 2026. This law’s purpose is to legally institutionalize the Chinese Communist Party’s long-standing policy of forced assimilation under the ideology of the “Chinese Nation Community” (中华民族共同体).
Far from protecting ethnic diversity, the law codifies years of repressive policies implemented against Uyghurs and other non-Han peoples into permanent national policy. It establishes a comprehensive legal framework for replacing distinct ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural identities with a single state-defined political identity centered on loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.
China’s new law legalizes the CCP’s policy of cultural erasure.
It expands state control over language, education, religion, family life, media, cyberspace, and cultural identity.
The legislation solidifies policies already imposed on Uyghurs, Tibetans, Southern Mongolians, and other non-Han peoples.
It raises serious concerns about the continued expansion of China’s campaign of transnational repression targeting diaspora communities worldwide.
For more than a decade, the Uyghur homeland of East Turkistan has served as the testing ground for the very policies now enshrined in this law. Uyghurs have endured mass arbitrary detention, political indoctrination, forced labor, religious persecution, destruction of mosques and cultural heritage, suppression of the Uyghur language, compulsory boarding schools, family separation, coercive population-control measures, and one of the world’s most intrusive systems of digital surveillance.
The legislation marks a fundamental shift in China’s ethnic policy. While China’s Constitution continues to recognize multiple ethnic groups, this law moves beyond nominal recognition of diversity and instead promotes ideological, linguistic, cultural, and political conformity.
It further extends state authority over nearly every aspect of life by:
Promoting Mandarin Chinese as the dominant language of education and public life while undermining mother-tongue education;
Requiring schools—and even families—to instill the ideology of the “Chinese Nation Community”;
Expanding the Communist Party’s control over religious institutions through the continued “Sinicization” of religion;
Broadening censorship and restrictions on speech under the pretext of protecting “ethnic unity”;
Providing additional legal justification for China’s campaign of transnational repression targeting Uyghur communities abroad.
Many of the practices reinforced by this legislation have already been documented by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, whose 2022 assessment concluded that the arbitrary and discriminatory detention of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim groups “may constitute crimes against humanity.”
Independent academic research, leaked Chinese government documents, survivor testimony, and investigations conducted by democratic governments and international organizations have likewise documented widespread and systematic abuses.
This law is not a new beginning – it enshrines policies that the international community has already recognized as grave violations of fundamental human rights into law.
“For years, Beijing claimed its policies in my homeland were temporary counterterrorism measures. This new law exposes the truth: it makes permanent a system designed to erase the Uyghur people’s identity, language, faith, and culture,” said Rushan Abbas, Executive Director of CFU. “This is deeply personal to me. My sister, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, has spent nearly eight years imprisoned simply because I exercised my right to speak freely in the United States. Her case is a stark reminder of what the CCP is capable of and what is legalized in this new law.. Beijing calls this ‘ethnic unity.’ We call it what it is: forced assimilation. You cannot legislate away a people’s identity. This law is not about unity—it is a legal blueprint for cultural erasure, and the world must not legitimize it.”
CFU calls upon the United Nations, democratic governments, the European Union, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Organization of Turkic States, international human rights organizations, legal experts, academic institutions, and all people of conscience to reject China’s attempt to legitimize forced assimilation through domestic legislation.
The international community must recognize this law for what it is: a dangerous legal milestone that institutionalizes the destruction of ethnic, religious, and cultural identity.
The survival of a people is measured not simply by population size, but by whether that people can freely preserve its language, religion, culture, history, identity, and determine its own future. When those foundations are systematically dismantled, the issue is no longer merely one of human rights violations—it becomes a question of a people’s very existence.
