Chief Rabbi Mirvis noted his own experiences campaigning against the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union during the 1980s, and remarked that change to the seemingly “insurmountable justice” eventually did come.
“The freedoms we enjoy, coupled with a perception that nothing we do will help, often create a culture of apathy,” he wrote. “Time and again, history has taught us that it is precisely such apathy that permits hatred to flourish. The Talmud teaches that: ‘We are not expected to complete the task, but neither are we free to desist from it’.”
The Chief Rabbi called for an “urgent, independent and unfettered investigation” into the treatment of Uighur Muslims, and urged readers to write to companies linked to the use of Uighurs for forced labour.
The Chinese state has reportedly incarcerated as many as a million of its Uighur citizens – a Muslim minority which lives mostly in the Xinjiang province in northwestern China – in “re-education camps”.
The Chinese government has also been accused of a programme of forced sterilisation against Uighur women, which it denies.
Previously, Board of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl has spoken out against their treatment, and in a letter to the Chinese ambassador to the UK cited “similarities” between the treatment of Uighurs and Nazi persecution.
