Justice Abroad’s Michael Polak has Meeting with Chair of UN Working Group on Enforce or Involuntary Disappearances to Discuss our Clients’ Cases
Justice Abroad’s Michael Polak has Meeting with Chair of UN Working Group on Enforce or Involuntary Disappearances to Discuss our Clients’ Cases
JUSTICE ABROAD
“Here When You Need Us”
Justice Abroad’s Michael Polak is instructed by the family of Uyghur businessmen Rozi Hemdul and Mehmet Hemdul and ethnic Uzbek father and son Enwer Tursun and Ezimet Enwer who have been subject to enforced disappearances and arbitrarily detention as part of the Chinese Government’s attack on Turkic people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Area.
The clients that Justice Abroad represents are father and son, shopkeeper Enwer Tursun and Ezimet Enwer who were seized by the Chinese authorities in April and January 2018 (further information here) and real estate entrepreneurs brothers Mehmet Hemdul and Rozi Haj Hemdul (further information here)
On 14 May 2020 Michael took part in an online meeting with the Chair-Rapporteur of the United Nation’s Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (UN WGEID) to discuss both these cases. The UN WGEID was established in 1980 as a group of expert to ‘examine questions relevant to enforced or involuntary disappearances of persons’. One of the Working Group's mains tasks ‘is to assist families in determining the fate or whereabouts of their family members who are reportedly disappeared’. The Working Group also has a monitoring role in that it is also entrusted with monitoring the progress of States in fulfilling their obligations deriving from the Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearances.’
The Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group is Mr. Bernard Duhaime from Canada who was appointed by the United Nation’s in 2014 and is a Professor at the Law Department in the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Quebec in Montreal.
On 12 March 2020, Justice Abroad was informed by the United Nations’ Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (UNWGEID) that they have transmitted the details of the men’s cases to the Chinese Government and hoped that ‘appropriate investigations would be carried out in order to clarify the fate and whereabouts of the aforementioned individuals and to protect their rights’.
Mr Polak states the following ‘the Chinese authorities are doing great damage to the reputation of the country by their targeted oppression of Uyghur and other Turkic people. The United Nation’s is aware of China’s actions in the Xinjiang Autonomous Uyghur Area and if the country continues to behave in this way it risks being recognized as an international pariah. We simply request that these men, who are of good character, be released so that they can return to their families.’
Media requests for interviews with Michael Polak or members of the Hemdul and Tursun families can be accommodated in any language requested and should be made by contacting Justice Abroad by email at contact@JusticeAbroad.co.uk or phone on +44 (0)203 488 2316.
On social media we will be using the hashtag #FreeHemdulBrothers and #FreeTheTursuns.
Justice Abroad can be found on Twitter here, Facebook here, and LinkedIn here.
Notes to Editors
Justice Abroad, www.justiceabroad.co.uk has been set up to help those trying to find their way through foreign justice systems with all the associated hurdles that presents, to represent those facing gross breaches of their human rights no matter where this takes place, and to advise and assist the victims of crimes as to how to achieve justice.
To help such individuals or families with these dilemmas and many more, three experts, Michael Polak, a barrister with an international practice focussed on the assistance of foreign nationals in trouble around the world, David Swindle , a former Detective Superintendent who has worked on hundreds of murders and complex high profile investigations in the UK and abroad during his 34 years in the police, and David Walters MVO, a former British Diplomat with over thirty years’ experience having served in over a dozen countries around the world, have pooled their extensive experience and contacts together to provide a comprehensive service. In providing this service the team consider all legal, political, and investigatory steps which might assist their clients attain justice.