British university accused of bowing to China over Uyghur research

Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) demanded a professor stop researching the Chinese state’s treatment of Uyghur people. Individuals claiming to be from the Chinese security agencies are said to have pressured the university and harassed staff. And now, its become a counter-terrorism case.

The Uyghurs are a marginalised Muslim group in China whose treatment by the Chinese state had been widely condemned. Professor Laura Murphy had been researching Uyghur forced labour. After she was told to stop research, Murphy demanded to know what documents the university held on the matter.

Business over rigour

Murphy told the BBC the document showed SHU:

had negotiated directly with a foreign intelligence service to trade my academic freedom for access to the Chinese student market.

Murphy explained just how craven she believed SHU were being:

I’d never seen anything quite so patently explicit about the extent to which a university would go to ensure that they have Chinese student income.

SHU have since apologised:

the university’s decision to not continue with Professor Laura Murphy’s research was taken based on our understanding of a complex set of circumstances at the time, including being unable to secure the necessary professional indemnity insurance.

They said SHU wished to “make clear our commitment to supporting her research and to securing and promoting freedom of speech and academic freedom within the law”.

But now the police are involved in the case.

Terrorism issue

South Yorkshire police say the “allegations fall under Section 3 of the National Security Act”.

The act can be read here. Section 3 refers to:

conduct to materially assist a foreign intelligence service in carrying out UK-related activities.

The Chinese state blocked the Sheffield Hallam website and the country’s embassy released various statements attacking Murphy and her research.

They said the centre’s work was factually flawed and anti-China, and referred to funding from “certain US agencies”.

Murphy told the BBC she had

received funding over the course of her career from the US National Endowment for Humanities for work on slave narratives, the US Department of Justice for work on human trafficking in New Orleans, and more recently from USAID, the US State Department and the UK Foreign Office for her work on China.

Uyghur suppression and forced labour

There have been various strongly-argued reports on the Chinese state’s treatment of Uyghurs. One, by the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) describes:

…arbitrary arrests and forced labor, sterilizations to torture, more than one million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other minorities are estimated to have been locked up in so-called “re-education” camps and prisons in the region over the last decade.

The UN has warned of serious human rights violations. Amnesty has called China’s conduct crimes against humanity and Human Rights Watch (HRW) has reported authoritarian restrictions and the erasure of Uyghur villages.

China has always denied the allegations. But, Murphy’s allegations of repression at SHU via a foreign power are extremely troubling, to say the least. And, we’ll be keeping a close eye on the case as it’s reviewed by the police.

Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Al Jazeera English