Date: October 17 – November 21, 2019
PCT co-hosted the first ever Taiwan International Religious Freedom Forum (TIRFF), which brought together government officials and human rights activists from 23 countries. Invited guests included Taiwan’s president and vice president, who spoke truth to Beijing power, on the dangers of Chinese repression. Conference participants called out Chinese atrocities, including crimes against humanity such as the forced organ-harvesting of Uyghurs who are of Turkish descent. In addition, the conference heard from a North Korean refugee who upon her forced repatriation from China, was coerced into undergoing a late-term abortion without anaesthesia.
Among other actions, the conference called for the inspection of burgeoning Uyghur concentration camps in northwest China by the American Red Cross and reunification of families forcibly separated by mass internment. It concluded with the adoption of the “Taiwan Declaration on the Persecution of the Uyghurs.”