Activist Rushan Abbas is calling for sanction against China over its treatment of Uighurs.

Kathryn Bermingham

A leading activist says China's Nazi-style treatment of its Uighur population is "history repeating itself", and has called on Australia and other Western democracies to force change by leveraging trade partnerships.
Rushan Abbas, a Uighur living in America, is calling for the emerging superpower to be stripped of its 2022 Winter Olympics and 2021 FIFA Club World Cup hosting rights.

She said holding the events in China would be rewarding its government for committing genocide and crimes against humanity, and that the global community must take a harsher approach.
"When Nazi Germany built its first concentration camps in 1933 ... most of the economically independent or rich countries continued to do business with Germany, enabled Germany's economy to murder more people," she told reporters at the US embassy in Canberra on Thursday.

"That's exactly the same thing that's happening right now.

"Continuing to do business with China is enabling the Chinese economy to be the threat to the world community, democracy and values."
The United Nations says there are credible reports that at least one million Uighur Muslims are being held in "re-education" camps in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang.
But the Chinese government has consistently denied any mistreatment of Uighurs and says the camps are providing vocational training.
Ms Abbas' comments echoed those of Liberal politician Andrew Hastie, who was criticised in August for likening the global response to China's rise to the lack of preparedness in Europe for the growth of Nazi Germany.
The West Australian backbencher, who chairs federal parliament's intelligence and security committee, drew a mixed reaction from his coalition colleagues and condemnation from Beijing at the time.
He has also used parliamentary privilege to speak out about Chinese influence in Australia and human rights abuses against Uighurs in Xinjiang.
Ms Abbas, the founder of the Campaign for Uighurs advocacy group, visited Parliament House to take her message directly to politicians.
She said "freedom is not free" and Australia and other Western democracies must invoke their trade relationships with China to send a message.
"Every time when there is a foreign policy or any kind of trade or negotiations, the Uighur issue should be there linked together," she said.

"Unless we use that trade and economy to defend those millions of voiceless people's rights, nothing is going to work."
Australian Associated Press