Georgetown Law Students Advocate for the Protection of Uyghur Refugees
May 6, 2024
On April 16th, a group of Georgetown Law students was invited to the United States Capitol for a reception launching a revitalized Congressional Uyghur Caucus. This opportunity to convene with the Co-Chairs of the caucus, other Members of Congress, and the Uyghur activist community came on the heels of months of student advocacy for the protection of Uyghur refugees under the guidance of leaders of the Human Rights Institute.
Last fall, HRI Executive Director Elisa Massimino led a group of Georgetown Law students to the Russell Senate Office Building for a reception that highlighted the ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Students had the opportunity to meet Members of Congress and Uyghur activists, including survivors of the concentration camps in Xinjiang. It was a profoundly moving experience—and for many students, their first opportunity to be in a Senate hearing room.
Around the same time, Massimino and HRI Distinguished Fellow Scott Busby began brainstorming solutions to the situation of Uyghur refugees whose cases are stuck in the interminable and growing asylum backlog at the Department of Homeland Security—which currently operates on a last-in, first-out system—and the increasing fears that many human rights advocates have as the CCP has stepped up its transnational repression of Uyghur exiles here in the United States.
Seizing an opportunity for student engagement on a pressing human rights issue here in Washington, Massimino and Busby approached Sonia Geba (L’24) and Rafaella Zabot-Hall (L’24), the leaders of the student chapter of the International Refugee Assistance Project, to develop a legal and policy argument aimed at persuading DHS Secretary Mayorkas to pull Uyghur asylum cases out of the backlog. Geba and Zabot-Hall enthusiastically agreed, and they promptly put together a team of volunteers, including Saio Conteh (L’26), Susan Powell (L’26), Fina Short (L’26), and Dexter Woods (L’25) to brainstorm an advocacy strategy.
As part of that strategy, they invited a leader of the World Uyghur Congress to Georgetown Law to hear his ideas and perspectives, and the students then worked over several months to research and draft a compelling and persuasive letter to Secretary Mayorkas. The letter urged him to prioritize the processing of asylum claims by persons from the Uyghur region in the People’s Republic of China in light of the ongoing genocide and transnational repression. Several influential advocates for the rights of Uyghurs at Georgetown University joined Massimino and Busby on the letter, including Thomas Kellogg, Executive Director of the Center for Asian Law; James Millward, Professor in the Walsh School of Foreign Service; and Andrew Schoenholtz, Faculty Director of the Human Rights Institute and the Center for Applied Legal Studies. They are hopeful their efforts will be fruitful; Secretary Mayorkas responded immediately to the plea, and his team is now meeting to discuss how to proceed.
At the reception last month, students had the opportunity to hear U.S. Representatives and Caucus Co-Chairs Thomas Suozzi (D-NY) and Chris Smith (R-NJ) announce the relaunch of the bi-partisan Congressional Uyghur Caucus in order to highlight the systemic human rights violations by the Chinese Communist Party against Uyghur Muslims. The students’ letter to Secretary Mayorkas may also spur action by the Caucus, as Representatives Suozzi and Smith are now considering writing their own letter to Secretary Mayorkas modeled on the one the students drafted.
“These are exactly the kinds of opportunities we want to create for our students—leveraging legal research, persuasive writing, and advocacy strategy to galvanize real-world impact,” Massimino concluded. “I couldn’t be prouder of how our students seized that challenge.”