SOLD OUT: An Update on Human Rights in China
October 16th, 2019 6:00PM -7:30PM
Upwards of one million Muslim Uighurs have been forced to enter into reeducation camps in the Xinjiang region of China. While China asserts that these detention centers are central to its fight against Islamist extremism and that they are reducing the numbers in the camps, human rights watchdogs accuse the government of indiscriminately detaining men, women, and children without trial and forcing them to undergo psychological indoctrination programs. Join the World Affairs Council on October 16 for a discussion with Brad Adams, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division, on the Chinese repression of the Uighur population and overall human rights in China.
About the Speaker
Brad Adams, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division since 2002, oversees the organization’s work on human rights issues in twenty countries, from Afghanistan to the Pacific. At Human Rights Watch, he has worked on a wide range of issues including freedom of expression, protection of civil society and human rights defenders, counterterrorism, refugees, gender and religious discrimination, armed conflict, and impunity. He has written for publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Foreign Affairs, and Wall Street Journal.
Prior to Human Rights Watch, Adams worked in Cambodia for five years as the senior lawyer for the Cambodia field office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and as the legal advisor to the Cambodian parliament’s human rights committee, conducting human rights investigations, supervising a judicial reform program, and drafting and revising legislation. A former legal aid lawyer in California and founder of the Berkeley Community Law Center, Adams graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law. He teaches International Human Rights Law and Practice at Berkeley Law School and is a member of the California bar.
About the Moderator
Anita Ramasastry is an expert in the fields of anti-corruption, commercial law, sustainable development and business and human rights. Her current research focuses on legal rights and responsibilities of state-owned enterprises.
From 2009 to 2012, Ramasastry served as a senior advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Market Access and Compliance in the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce, working under the leadership of then Secretary Gary Locke. She directed the ITA's anti-corruption and trade efforts, and helped to launch new initiatives with the G20, APEC and the OSCE. She has served as a staff attorney at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, an associate attorney at the international law firm of White & Case in Budapest, Hungary, and assistant professor of law at the Central European University in Budapest. She also served as a special attorney and advisor to a special claims resolution tribunal in Zurich, Switzerland, established to resolve claims to World War II-era bank accounts.
She has been recognized by the students as the Philip A. Trautman Professor of the Year in 1997, 2003, and 2006. In 1998, she received the UW Distinguished Teaching Award and in 2002, she received the UW Outstanding Public Service Award for her work focused on domestic violence.