UK academics call out Chinese state repression over Uyghur research

A UK scholar says she has received death threats over her research into Chinese oppression of Uyghur communities. Sheffield Hallam University China expert professor Katie Murphy told how she and others were put under considerable pressure over their research interests. Murphy initially spoke to the BBC about how Sheffield Hallam:

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

Murphy has now spoken out further, saying:

I think that there are a lot of people who experience some version of this, typically more subtle, usually not so black and white. But it’s too risky to speak out against their university. They’re worried they might suffer consequences.

She had been researching supply chains and China’s use of Uyghur people as forced labour.

Now, an academic at Nottingham University has also spoken out about feeling pressured. Political scientist Dr. Andreas Fulda told the Guardian ‘spoof’ emails were sent to colleagues announcing his resignation:

What I’ve come to learn is that once you reach a certain perception threshold in the eyes of the Chinese security agencies, you are punished to dissuade you from airing your views.

A difficult tightrope

China have already sanctioned an academic from Newcastle University for their work on Uyghurs. Jo Smith Finley, who was reprimanded in 2021, said:

Ever since then, Newcastle University has been walking a very difficult tightrope in its treatment of me, because I’ve become a liability in a context where universities are all dependent on Chinese student tuition fees.

It’s extremely heavy, the pressure that the Chinese authorities bring to bear, both on university representatives working in the PRC [People’s Republic of China] on recruitment and also on university managers in the UK.

There are numerous report of Uyghurs, a Muslim minority group in China, being brutally repressed by the Chinese state. This includes imprisonment, forced labour and erasure of their culture – and even their villages. China denies this. The Chinese embassy in London has inferred Murphy is an anti-Chinese intelligence asset.

The allegations are now being investigated by police under counter-terrorism laws aimed at stopping foreign state interference. Sheffield Hallam initially put a stop to Murphy’s research. That ban was lifted in October after accusations that the university had done so to protect the lucrative income stream from Chinese students.

The university denied this, claiming the ban was due to:

a complex set of circumstances at the time, including being unable to secure the necessary professional indemnity insurance.

However, now that more academics are speaking out, China’s influence in repression of British research on Uyghur minorities is more than troubling.

Featured image via the Canary