Anti-extremist activist goes on hunger strike to protest China's human rights violations against Uighur Muslims

Maajid Nawaz, an anti-extremist activist and London Broadcasting Company host, is currently on a hunger strike. He will continue to do so until he has gathered enough support for the United Kingdom Parliament to have a debate about human rights violations against Uighur Muslims by the Chinese Communist Party.

"I declare a hunger strike in meditative silence for #STOPUigurMuslimGenocide," Nawaz wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. "In protest against CCP enslavement, rape & harvesting of my Uigur Muslim, Falun Gong, Buddhist or Christian brethren's organs, I'm on hunger strike until the UK Parliament agrees to formally debate acknowledgment of the Uigur genocide."

The LBC host is encouraging his 274,000 Twitter followers to sign a petition titled "Impose sanctions on China over its treatment of Uyghur Muslims." If the petition gets 100,000 signatures, the U.K. Parliament will debate the issue. At the time of publication, the petition had over 78,000 signatures.

"The UK Government plans to introduce 'Magnitsky law,' a law which targets people who commit gross human rights violations," the petition reads. "Through this law or alternative means, this petition urges the UK Government to impose sanctions on China for their human rights violations on the Uyghur people."

"Since 2017, there have been many reports of the 'cultural genocide' of Uyghur Muslims, a minority Turkic ethnic group native to Xinjiang, China," the petition states. "They are subject to mass detention, mass surveillance, restriction of religious and cultural identities, as well as other gross human rights abuses. Over a million Uyghurs have been forced into 're-education' camps."

Nawaz tweeted that "1-2 million Uigur Muslims are held in CCP concentration camps" and that there is evidence that the Chinese government has an "organ-harvesting human slave trafficking network."

"Genocide against Uigur Muslims in East Turkestan is currently taking place," Nawaz said. "Up to two million people are being held in concentration camps. Uighurs are suffering repression, torture and the plundering of their bodies for spare parts for the organ transplant market."

"The world seems to have turned a blind eye to this abuse," he added. "We appear to care more about globalized supply chains, cheap labor and greed than fairness and respect for fundamental human rights. As a result, civil society and our political establishment is at risk of being politically, morally and economically compromised by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)."

Nawaz also included a link to a Change.org petition titled "End the Uigar genocide and concentration camps in China," which has nearly 15,000 signatures.

Nawaz is the founder of the Quilliam Foundation, a London-based think tank that focuses on counter-extremism.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized a huge shipment of human hair products from China that hint at "potential human right abuses of forced child labor and imprisonment." CBP officers at the Port of New York/Newark intercepted a shipment of 13 tons of hair products worth over $800,000 that originated from Xinjiang, China, and linked to the Chinese government's Uighur concentration camps.