‘Release them immediately’: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets Mihrigul Tursun and other Uygurs, demands China end mass incarceration
- Mihrigul Tursun has been vocal in the US about what she said was widespread torture amid China’s mass detention of Muslim Uygurs
- Mike Pompeo says the US is ‘working to convince the Chinese that this practice is abhorrent and ought to be stopped’
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo renewed demands Wednesday that China end its widespread detention of Uygur Muslims as he met with a survivor and relatives of prisoners.
“We call on the Chinese government to release immediately these individuals’ family members and all others arbitrarily detained in the camps,” the State Department said in a statement on Pompeo’s meeting.
The top US diplomat met Tuesday with Mihrigul Tursun, a Uygur who has spoken publicly in the United States about what she said was widespread torture in China’s prisons for the minority group.
She has said she was separated from her children and detained in a cramped cell with 60 other women, suffering electrocution and beatings during round-the-clock interrogations.
The State Department said that Pompeo also met with three other Uygurs whose relatives are detained by China, which according to a UN report has detained a massive one million Uygurs as it seeks forcibly to integrate the minority group.