Uyghur human rights activists and organizations have asked President Donald Trump this week to use his visit to Beijing, China, to raise the issue of the Communist Party’s ongoing genocide against their people, which is linked deeply to the Chinese economy through state-sponsored slavery.
President Trump is currently in Beijing, having arrived to much fanfare on Wednesday. Much of Thursday, local time, consisted of scheduled talks with dictator Xi Jinping and his top officials on a variety of topics of mutual interest, following by a lavish banquet in the American president’s honor. Chinese state media and the White House have both listed economic issues, the ongoing conflict with Iran, and other issues of bilateral concern among topics of discussion.
While President Trump has been among the most vocal world leaders against Chinese human rights abuses – his first administration was the first in the world to recognize the killing, enslaving, and sterilizing of Uyghurs as a genocide – the issue has not surfaced in any official media at press time. Uyghur leaders have spent much of the week encouraging the president to raise human rights, and specifically the genocide, in conversation with Xi.
“China’s occupation of East Turkistan is a direct threat to American national security,” The East Turkistan Government in Exile observed in a statement published in anticipation of Trump’s visit. “East Turkistan holds one-third of China’s oil and gas reserves and over 40 percent of its coal reserves, powering the Chinese economy and military.”
East Turkistan is the Uyghur homeland in Central Asia, which operated as a sovereign nation until its invasion and capture by Mao Zedong in 1949. Today, China controls the region and administers is as the “province” of Xinjiang, using a Han Chinese name for the region rather than the one used by its indigenous people. This policy has expanded out of East Turkistan to neighboring Tibet, which the Communist Party under Xi Jinping began referring to as “Xizang.”
Encouraging Trump to discuss the Uyghur homeland, the government-in-exile asserted that “East Turkistan’s independence is American strategic necessity” and that America would benefit from freedom in the region, which is rich in mineral resources.
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Video Source: Matt Perdie / Breitbart News
“The critical minerals at this summit are extracted from occupied East Turkistan under conditions of genocide and enslavement,” Salih Hudayar, foreign minister of the government in exile, stated. “A restored free and independent East Turkistan would supply America these minerals at competitive rates, strengthening American industry and breaking Beijing’s chokehold.”
Similarly, a column in the human rights magazine Bitter Winter published on Thursday argued that Washington had much to gain from Uyghur freedom – and American silence could embolden Chinese repression.
“Uyghurs are widely regarded as one of the most pro-American Muslim communities in the world and could serve as a bridge of understanding between different societies. Continued repression, however, deepens instability, fuels despair, and prolongs immense suffering,” the author, writing under the pseudonym Kok Bayraq, proposed.
“If discussions with China focus solely on trade and economic matters while remaining silent on human rights—including the Uyghur genocide—such silence risks encouraging further repression and deepening hopelessness among Uyghurs and other persecuted peoples,” the column continued.
The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) issued a call on May 7 for Trump to address the genocide in light of the many Chinese industries tied to Uyghur slavery.
“Statements of condemnation lose their meaning if they are not followed by concrete action,” Turgunjan Alawdun, President of the World Uyghur Congress, said in the statement. “The United States has long been a strong and vocal ally of the Uyghur people, and we call on President Donald Trump to uphold that tradition and continue advancing the protection of Uyghur rights.”
The WUC also described the current situation in East Turkistan:
Millions of Uyghurs are still detained in camps or in prisons, Uyghur women have been sterilized in an attempt to diminish the Uyghur population, labour transfer programs have increased in recent years, forcibly displacing Uyghur workers and coercing them into work, Uyghur language has been banned in many schools and prefectures, even the most basic expressions of religious sentiment have been criminalized, Uyghur mosques, shrines, graveyards and homes have been destroyed, children have been taken away from their families and the CCP has sought to eradicate the Uyghur identity and forcibly assimilate the Uyghur people. The Chinese government has also been actively trying to disrupt diaspora communities abroad, by intimidating, threatening Uyghurs abroad, particularly human rights activists.
President Trump has long been supportive of the Uyghur cause. In 2019, he welcomed victims of religious persecution to the Oval Office, including Jewher Ilham, daughter of imprisoned Uyghur professor Ilham Tohti.
“With us today are men and women of many different religious traditions, from many different countries, but what you have in common is that each of you have suffered tremendously for your faith,” the president said at the time.
A year later, Trump signed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act into law, the first such law actively imposing sanctions on Chinese officials for their role in the genocide. Trump would also go on to sign the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which created a presumption that any goods imported from East Turkistan were made by slaves and preventing their import into America without importers offering proof that they were not tainted by slavery.
The author of the UFLPA is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was banned from China for his trouble. He accompanied Trump to Beijing this week through a bureaucratic loophole created by the Communist Party. Chinese officials have simply begun using different Chinese letters to transliterate Rubio’s name and declared that the sanctioned “Marco Rubio” is a different person.
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