Don’t expect Donald Trump to step up and get tough on human rights abuses in Xinjiang any time soon
Owen Churchill says the Trump administration has a dismal track record on humanitarian issues, but US lawmakers have been making the right noises about the detention of Muslims in Xinjiang. Trump should listen to them and act
This isn’t surprising, for two reasons. First is the Trump administration’s dismal track record in humanitarian issues. As the president happily fawns over “tough guys” like Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin and Rodrigo Duterte, his government has steadily chipped away at any prospect that it intends to hold the global community to the universal principles that the US has often espoused.
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In the words of Sarah Sewall, former undersecretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights, the Trump administration’s view of human rights “as the rights of Christians” has determined where and why it has chosen to engage around the world and “really narrowed the aperture of human rights policy”.
Sewall, whose previous role has remained vacant since Trump took office – along with a number of other human rights positions – told me she’d be surprised if “protecting the rights of beleaguered Muslim minorities became a significant foreign policy objective in its own right”.
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Yet, in a speech of more 4,000 words, Pence afforded only two sentences to the reported internment and forced re-education of up to 1 million Muslims in China, and offered no substantive suggestion as to how the US should act on its concern.
Therein lies the problem. As the Trump administration scrambles to tighten the screws on Beijing amid an escalating trade war, the plight of Uygurs in Xinjiang could all too easily become a sound bite, a tweet, more empty words.
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Trump has a little more than two years left to claw back human rights protection, but the hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Xinjiang held in extrajudicial detention don’t have the luxury of time.
Listen to your lawmakers. Seek alliances with like-minded nations. Park your ego and put your “friendship” with Xi Jinping on hold. For once, be the “tough guy” and do something about Xinjiang.
Owen Churchill is a US correspondent for the Post, based in Washington