A group of more than 40 American-Muslim civil rights organizations in the United States on Thursday announced a campaign to boycott Hilton Worldwide on what they said was the company’s plan to build a hotel on the site of ‘a Uyghur mosque razed by authorities in Xinjiang in China. Region.

Speaking at a press conference outside Hilton’s Virginia headquarters, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization at the forefront of the initiative, said it “negotiated indirectly” with the hotel group calling on them to cancel the construction plan, but that the discussions had remained “in vain”.

“Today we are announcing a global boycott campaign against Hilton,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR.

“You and I have the choice of where to go when traveling or for doing business meetings or for organizing events, weddings or banquets,” Awad said, adding that the project is a human rights violation that contributes to the destruction of Uyghur culture. and faith.

China has waged a long campaign against the predominantly Muslim Uyghur population with mass internments, forced sterilizations, the separation of children from their families and the destruction of religious and cultural places. China has denied the claims.

The site that triggered the boycott was a Hotan Prefecture mosque, destroyed in 2018, which Hilton plans to turn into a Hampton Inn hotel.

SIGN THE PETITION https://t.co/XLtDkMoW71#BoycottHilton

– CAIR National (@CAIRNational) September 16, 2021

Awad said he was made aware of the proposed project in early June.

In July, a bipartisan commission in the US Congress asked Hilton Worldwide not to associate its name with the hotel project.

About 16,000 mosques in 900 localities in Xinjiang were partially or completely destroyed between 2017 and 2020, according to a study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Minarets have been removed from mosques, some completely demolished in an area closely watched by China. The destruction has been verified by field reports, and by comparing satellite photos from previous years to date.

Officials in Beijing told Reuters news agency earlier this year that no religious sites in Xinjiang had been forcibly destroyed or restricted and invited them to visit the area.

In 12 days of reporting during Ramadan in April and May, most of the mosques visited by Reuters journalists had been partially or completely demolished, the agency said.

The United Nations and rights groups estimate that a million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities are held in camps where they have been put to work in Xinjiang. China initially denied the existence of the camps, but has since said they were vocational training centers designed to counter extremism.

China has denied accusations that it mistreats minority Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, or that forced labor is carried out there.

In January, the United States announced an import ban on all cotton and tomato products from Xinjiang over claims they were subjected to forced labor by Uyghurs.

Several Western brands, including H&M, Burberry and Nike, have fallen victim to consumer boycotts in China after raising concerns about alleged forced labor in Xinjiang. China holds about 20 percent of the world cotton market, and 85 percent of its cotton comes from Xinjiang.

Earlier in September, a human rights group lodged a complaint with German prosecutors alleging that several fashion retailers profited from forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region.

The Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) accuses Lidl, Hugo Boss and other retailers of directly or indirectly encouraging and profiting from forced labor in the Xinjiang cotton industry, according to 96 complaint. pages received by prosecutors in Karlsruhe. federal court.

On Monday, UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said recent efforts to gain access to China’s Xinjiang region to investigate reports of serious violations against Muslim Uyghurs were unsuccessful, adding that ‘she was finalizing a report on the situation.

“I regret that I am unable to report progress in my efforts to gain meaningful access to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” Bachelet said at the opening of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

“In the meantime, my office is finalizing its assessment of the information available on allegations of serious human rights violations in this region, with a view to making them public,” she said.