Cambridge don, 72, told students not to debate Uighur Muslims

A Cambridge don has warned his University against allowing debates on Uighur Muslims in China because it could damage ‘mutual understanding.’

Professor Peter Nolan, a fellow at Jesus College, said students should avoid discussions of human rights abuses in China because it would appear ‘as being a campaigning college for freedom for Hong Kong, freedom for the Uighurs.’

He said such discussions would lead to ‘unhelpful’ and ‘contentious’ outcomes. 

The emeritus professor, 72, also claimed media representation of Uighur Muslims was skewed and said the issue ‘is actually a much more complicated question.’

He said ‘all countries’ with ethnic minorities experience similar issues to those in China’s western Xinjiang province. 

Nolan, who is the director of the China Centre, made the comments during a meeting of the advisory committee of the Jesus College China Centre in November, The Sunday Times reported.  

The professor, who was given a CBE for ‘supporting British business in China’, has reportedly benefited from close ties with the country and received £3.7 million in funding from a trust with ties to a former Chinese president. 

He is also lead trustee in a charity that received funding from China for a translation project and met with top Chinese official Xiao Yaqing in September 2019. 

Jesus College’s ties with China have increasingly come under scrutiny after the college was found to have taken a £155,000 donation from Huawei and later ruled positively on the telecom giant. 

Nolan’s college also received a £200,000 grant from the Chinese government in 2018. 

Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith has since accused the college of becoming a ‘mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party’. 

Nolan made the remarks after colleagues called for more events to encourage debate in the college. 

He said Jesus College should not platform people with ‘very, very, very strong’ views on China, without someone else ‘presenting a different point of view’, after colleagues suggested hosting Lord Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, who has described the Chinese president’s leadership as ‘thuggish and unpleasant’. 

The professor said: ‘If you think that having a meeting where the main speaker is Chris Patten and there is nobody else presenting a different point of view is balanced, it’s not.

‘The views are very, very, very strong. They’re very, very strong on the Uighurs. They are very, very strong on Hong Kong … you have to have both views represented, otherwise the college will be perceived as being a campaigning college for freedom for Hong Kong, freedom for the Uighurs.’

He added: ‘The predominant view … is that everybody knows what is happening. Everybody doesn’t know what is happening. The majority — the mainstream through which opinion of Xinjiang is filtered is the World Uyghur Association [sic]. 

‘[It] is highly organised, is very active, and extremely well-represented in the global media, including the BBC and all other media outlets.

‘The World Uighur Association is financed by the NED. The National Endowment for Democracy is a not-for-profit organisation, which is funded by the US Congress. 

‘Its purpose is regime change in China and other parts of the world. So that what you regard in the media as self-evidently true is actually a much more complicated question.’

Nolan went on to complain hosting an event about Hong Kong would be ‘high contentious and very difficult to organise’ owing to the number of Chinese students at the college.  

‘The consequences’, he said, ‘would be very difficult to contain’.

He also doubled down on a claim the issue of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang is no different to ‘questions that affect all countries that have any kind of minority at all’. 

Responding to the leaked remarks, Nolan told The Times he ‘supports Jesus College’s position that no topic is out of bounds for academic discussion’. 

An estimated 1 million people or more – most of them Uighurs – have been confined in re-education camps in Xinjiang in recent years, according to researchers. 

Chinese authorities have been accused of imposing forced labor, systematic forced birth control and torture, and separating children from incarcerated parents. 

Beijing has flatly rejected the allegations. Officials have characterised the camps, which they say are now closed, as vocational training centres to teach Chinese language, job skills and the law to support economic development and combat extremism.

In April, Britain’s parliament followed those in Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada in declaring that Beijing’s policies against the Uighurs amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity. The US government has also done the same. 

A tribunal aiming to assess allegations of genocide in China opened in the UK on Friday.