The World Uyghur Congress has announced an online panel discussion on October 17, 2023. This date was chosen as the day before the 2023 Worldcon opens in Chengdu.

The press release quotes science fiction writer Andrew Gillsmith as saying:

The Chinese government wants to use Worldcon as a sort of Potemkin Village in order to showcase how futuristic and technologically advanced the country has become. Meanwhile, they are interning people in concentration camps, forcibly separating children from their families, conscripting Uyghurs into slave labour schemes, and implementing the most comprehensive and technologically sophisticated surveillance regime in history. Science fiction writers and fans have a longstanding tradition of standing for human rights. This is in the spirit of that tradition.

Another participant mentioned is Adam Hochschild, the author of King Leopold’s Ghost. I found that book to be a gripping account of how Belgium treated its Congo colony; it was even worse than the European norm for African possessions.

The release has one significant error: It claims that Worldcon GoH Sergei Lukianenko has called “for Ukrainian children to be drowned.” While his actual words were contemptible, they fell short of that — just barely. It was RT presenter Anton Krasovsky who said children who criticize Russia should be “thrown straight into a river with a strong current.” Lukianenko mildly demurred, saying that beating those children with rods would be sufficient to ensure their future silence. Of the two, Lukianenko deserves a slightly less painful spot in Hell.

Seeing lots of occurrences of the #writersSupportUyghurs tag during the run-up to Worldcon sounds like an excellent idea to me.