Young Uyghurs want to sue an Australian think tank for “defaming” them with a report about forced labour in Xinjiang province, Chinese state media claims.
Communist Party mouthpiece the Global Times published a lengthy article on Sunday featuring interviews with two Uyghur men, who allegedly told the outlet that the March 2020 report had damaged their reputation and hurt their employment opportunities by portraying them as “lazy people who need to be ‘forced’ to work”.
“We want them to stop slandering my hometown and to apologise for having defamed us,” Nuradli Wublikas, 26, was quoted as telling the Global Times.
The article claims Nuradli was one of a group of young Uyghur people living in Changsha, in central China’s Hunan province, who co-authored a letter calling for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute to be sued.
“ASPI stands by the quality of our original research and we remain committed to conducting empirical, independent, data-driven research,” a…