China allegedly pressured UK university to stop research into Uyghur genocide

Sheffield Hallam University has abandoned efforts to research the ongoing Uyghur genocide in China, after China waged a two-year intimidation campaign to stop it from happening.

Key Takeaways:

• The persecution of the Uyghur people, an ethnic Muslim minority in China, began in 2014.

• By 2017, Uyghurs were being moved to concentration camps, with the government's actions labeled a genocide internationally in 2021.

• Ongoing reports of human rights abuses describe forced abortions and sterilizations, infanticide, sexual violence, torture, and organ harvesting.

• When Sheffield Hallam University attempted to launch a research project into the genocide, a two-year intimidation campaign by the Chinese government reportedly shut the project down.

The Details:

According to the BBC and The Guardian, Professor Laura Murphy was leading research into forced labor and supply chains for the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice (HKC) research institution at Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom, focusing specifically on the Uyghur genocide in China.

Murphy initially began publishing research into the Uyghurs in 2021, and at that time, the HKC publicly lauded her work. The Chinese embassy in London, however, almost immediately began to hit back.

"The Helena Kennedy Centre at the Sheffield Hallam University has released multiple fake reports on Xinjiang that are seriously flawed," the embassy said in a statement to the BBC, adding, "While presenting itself as an academic body, the Centre has in practice acted as a vehicle for politicised and disinformation-driven narratives deployed by anti-China forces."

Internal e-mails found that the Chinese foreign ministry began threatening the university in 2022 with a boycott of Chinese students, potentially costing the university millions of pounds each year. The government then shut down access to the university's English language testing website that was used by students in China who were interested in attending Sheffield Hallam.

Eventually, access to all university websites was shut down, leaving students in China unable to access their enrollment information, arrange travel, or find out their course schedules. By 2024, it had worsened.

'The tone was threatening'

"Things in Beijing have kicked off," an internal email said, explaining that "three officers of the National Security Service" had visited Sheffield Hallam's offices in China, with university staffers questioned for hours about Murphy's research into the Uyghurs for HKC. According to the e-mail, "The tone was threatening and message to cease the research activity was made clear."

Within a month, a document said "a decision by the university not to publish a final phase of the research on forced labour in China was communicated to the National Security Service .. immediately relations improved and the threat to staff wellbeing appears to be removed."

Early in 2025, the university said it would officially stop funding Murphy's research; her entire research team was fired and the unit was shut down.

"[The university] had negotiated directly with a foreign intelligence service to trade my academic freedom for access to the Chinese student market," Murphy told the BBC. "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."

The Backstory:

Since the Uyghur genocide began, it has been estimated that over one million Uyghurs are currently being held in concentration camps and reportedly subjected to numerous horrors, such as sadistic sexual violence, forced labor, torture, organ donation without anesthesia, forced abortion and sterilization, and murder. 

Inside the concentration camps, prisoners are said to have their heads shaved and are forced to live in one small room together, sharing only a bucket for a toilet. There are cameras watching them at all times. When not in their rooms, they are reportedly subjected to propaganda, forced to confess “sins,” and undergo torture, with fingernails pulled out and electric shocks administered in the so-called “black room.” 

Hack reveals evidence of Chinese treatment of Uyghur Muslims

Zoom In:

Female survivors have spoken about being raped, forced into abortions, and being sterilized. One woman said they were given pills to take. “The pills had different kinds of effects,” she said. “Some prisoners were cognitively weakened. Women stopped getting their period[s] and men became sterile.” 

One woman was reportedly made to confess her so-called "sins" in front of 200 other prisoners.

“When she was done speaking, the policemen ordered her to disrobe and simply raped her one after the other, in front of everyone. While they were raping her they checked to see how we were reacting,” the survivor recalled. “People who turned their head or closed their eyes, and those who looked angry or shocked, were taken away and we never saw them again. It was awful. I will never forget the feeling of helplessness, of not being able to help her. After that happened, it was hard for me to sleep at night.”

Other female survivors have corroborated the stories of rape and forced abortion, as well as contraceptive implants being put in place. One survivor said her fourth baby was aborted without using anesthesia. “Two humans were lost in this tragedy — my baby and me,” she said.

Still another woman was kidnapped at six months pregnant. She already had five other children, and was carrying her sixth. Authorities seemed to be specifically seeking out pregnant Uyghur women. “The police came, one Uyghur and two Chinese," she said. "They put me and eight other pregnant women in cars and took us to the hospital. They first gave me a pill and said to take it. So I did. I didn’t know what it was. Half an hour later, they put a needle in my belly. And sometime after that I lost my child.”

Whistleblowers have also said China is committing infanticide on ethnic minorities, like Uyghurs. Hasiyet Abdulla, an OB/GYN who worked in the Xinjiang region, said if these women gave birth to more children than the government permitted them to have, their babies were murdered.

Leaked data also confirmed that one of the primary reasons for detainment was having "too many children."

The Bottom Line:

While the university has apologized to Murphy and said she can continue her research, the saga isn't over.

Chinese interference was so serious that South Yorkshire police have referred the case to the UK's anti-terrorism unit, believing that the “allegations fall under Section 3 of the National Security Act."