Pompeo Accuses China Of Genocide Against Muslim Uighurs In Xinjiang

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo giving a speech earlier this month. He said on Tuesday that China has committed genocide against its Muslim Uighur population.





Andrew Harnik/POOL/AFP via Getty Images



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Andrew Harnik/POOL/AFP via Getty Images



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Pompeo decried China’s policies that have denied basic human rights to minorities, saying authorities have «forced sterilizations and abortions on Uyghur women, coerced them to marry non-Uyghurs, and separated Uyghur children from their families.

The accusations are the strongest yet from Pompeo over China’s actions in Xinjiang, where analysts have estimated up to 1.5 million Muslim Uighurs and other ethnic minorities have been detained. The U.S. imposed sanctions on China’s government and officials last July, citing gross human rights violations in the region.

But as NPR’s Michele Kelemen reports for our Newscast unit, President Trump’s administration has been accused of taking an inconsistent approach regarding China and people in Xinjiang.

«In his book, Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton wrote that Trump told China’s president to go ahead and build detention camps for Uighurs, Kelemen said. «That was back when Trump was trying to negotiate a trade deal with China.



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Last year, Buzzfeed News used satellite images to identify what it said were hundreds of recently built internment camps in Xinjiang – large facilities that resemble prisons. China’s government has disagreed with that description, saying the installations are «vocational education and training centers.

A researcher published a report in Foreign Policy last summer saying that China’s suppression of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other groups meets the United Nations’ definition of genocide, citing a campaign of mass sterilizations, forced abortions and mandatory birth control.

Pompeo’s remarks were welcomed by the advocacy group Refugees International, whose president, Eric Schwartz, said that in Xinjiang, «the evidence of genocide is significant and substantial.

Schwartz called for international investigations and prosecutions over the treatment of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. But he added that he is «baffled and deeply concerned that Pompeo has not made a similar declaration about Myanmar and its treatment of the Rohingya population.