You’re listening to part two of an interview with Zofia Joynt, a first place winner of the 2025 Human Rights Essay Contest hosted by The Catholic University of America’s Center for Human Rights. The interview is conducted by Dr. William Saunders, director of the Center for Human Rights. To listen to the rest of this interview, check the link in the description or go to humanrights.catholic.edu.
William Saunders: So why does the CCP do this to the Muslim Uighurs, the Falun Gong, the Catholics? Why do they suppress them?
Zofia Joynt: Because totalitarianism and communism is about control, and so you cannot have any area of life that is not controlled. So a thriving church that’s out in the open and making decisions, and people living out their lives according to their conscience and according to religious beliefs is a huge threat to any communist group.
W: Yeah, ’cause totalitarianism means the totality, so it tries to control everything. So, if you believe in some greater-than-human source of meaning, or believe in something other than the Communist Party, therefore your beliefs are a threat to the Communist Party, and therefore it wants to crush them. So how would you respond to all this?
I think you mentioned, you know, with the Uighurs, there was… there’s a bill about forced labor. So how would you respond to these various atrocities?
Z: Yeah, so there was good work done by the signing of the Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which was banning all goods coming in from that region, from any companies that couldn’t prove that they weren’t using forced labor. But, of course, there’s always loopholes to agreements and false reports written and bribery.
So I think one of the things I would do is continue pushing for audits and turning a very suspicious eye towards products that are coming in from China. The US is one of China’s biggest trade partners, so I think that’s where we have a lot of leverage.
W: Let me just say for people listening, you know, when you think about how China’s gotten very wealthy with global trade; but why is that? Why can China make things so cheaply? Because it uses forced labor partially, like the Uighurs, or prisoners, and that’s against international law.
You can’t do that. The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t follow international law. So part of the reason everything’s cheap when it comes from China is because persecuted people make it.
Z: Correct. I also mentioned in my paper that the US Secretary of State attends meetings at the UN and is the chief representative of the United States in international affairs and foreign policy, and I think it’s important that the Secretary of State mention as often as possible and in front of any, especially world officials, just reminding and bringing to the table these issues so that China and other countries know that we’re not forgetting what’s happening there, and that the way that China treats its people matters outside of China.
Those evils spread and we’re not isolated in that way. We, you know, are all part of a global community. So advocating in every outlet, raising up the voices of people that are doing the work of advocacy, and just not letting anyone forget what’s going on.
W: Yeah, it’s important because of many reasons, but the best way to stop something bad from happening is to shine a light on it so that everybody knows about it, and even the perpetrators are embarrassed by it. And Guangcheng has told us on other podcasts how much the Chinese people value what the US does to bring these issues to the forefront, because otherwise, I mean, part of the way totalitarianism triumphs is to undermine the will of ordinary human beings to resist.
If they know that the world is paying attention and trying to help them, it helps them to hang on. So you’re doing… You’re helping them by just talking about these issues, and not treating China under the Communist Party like it’s a regular country that should be treated regularly. It’s a totalitarianist monstrosity and we need to raze it.
But you also note in your paper that there’s a, there’s a kind of a hurdle or obstacle to doing that. The communists are active in all these international fora – very, very active. And the CCP is seeking to kind of take over the UN and thereby end the criticism of itself.
Z:I was just reading about… Earlier this year, there was this college, a university in, I believe, the UK that was carrying out a research project into, the forced labor happening to the Uighurs, and due to Chinese pressure, had to shut the project down, and there was an eight-month pause.
They’ve started again, but with less oomph than they had before. And it’s a small example, but just that the pressures all over, not just in China, but suppressing voices outside of China that are talking about what’s happening there.
W: Yeah. So I would tell everybody Zofia’s essay will be up on the webpage, and you can read the whole thing there. As she says, we have to raise our voices and we have to identify those who are being oppressed for many, many reasons. So as, again, I just want to say, we’ll have another essay contest in the spring, and we encourage anybody listening or your friends, if you’re a student at any level, you can join it. So go to our webpage, humanrights.catholic.edu. We don’t have the announcement up there yet. We probably will be around February when we get it up. But you can also learn a lot on our webpage about Chen Guangcheng, and about all the other work we do.
So in closing, thank you, Zofia, for being with us. Anything you would like to end with?
Z: Thank you so much for having me. I would just like to say thank you for the Human Rights program, which opened my eyes to so many of these issues that are important for all of us to know about, and for the classes and content, like reading these encyclicals that helps formulate my worldview on these things.
W: Yeah, you’re very welcome. I mean, I’ll just say in my Human Rights program, the reason we do this is because the Catholic Church, as it’s sometimes said, an expert in humanity; it promotes the common good based on the dignity of the human person, and has thought very profoundly about these kinds of issues.
So sometimes human rights discourse is impoverished because it’s simply an assertion of rights. In our program, we learn about what are true rights and how to think in a way that helps you recognize those, and to think deeply about them so you can help other people learn about them.
And Zofia was one of my wonderful students in that, so thank you. And anybody listening, again, if you’re interested in the Human Rights program, the Master of Arts one-year program, you can go to mahumanrights.com. So Zofia, thank you.
Z: Thank you.
W: We’ll see you next time on another edition of The Barefoot Lawyer Reports.
The Catholic University of America’s Center for Human Rights has published a documentary on the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The documentary features world-class human rights experts, from former State Department officials, to ambassadors and human rights activists. It can be found on our website at humanrights.catholic.edu