Maajid Nawaz to discuss Uyghur persecution at Limmud

Award-winning commentator Maajid Nawaz is to speak about the Uyghur crisis at this month’s Limmud festival just months after he launched a hunger strike at what he described as “genocide” in China’s Xinjiang province.

A broadcaster and analyst with a huge online following, Nawaz also chairs anti-extremism organisation Quilliam, and will be in conversation with former Jewish Leadership Council chair Sir Mick Davis.

Nawaz took the drastic action earlier this year to secure a parliamentary debate on the imposition of sanctions on those responsible for human rights violations against the Uyghur Muslim minority.

It comes as Jewish News this week profiles the first of two Uyghur women whose sanctuary outside China has allowed them to describe the persecution in so-called ‘re-education’ camps.

Also speaking at this year’s Limmud will be Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s new ambassador to the UK, as well as senior leaders of the Royal Free Hospital in London, who will explain how medics dealt with – and continue to deal with – the pandemic.

Labour politicians Margaret Hodge and Louise Ellman will speak about antisemitism in the party, while elsewhere director Julie Cohen will recall how she made ‘RBG’, the Netflix documentary on late US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.