Donald Trump’s China adviser suggests Beijing’s Xinjiang activities are a ‘crime against humanity’

US President Trump’s top national security adviser for China appeared to endorse an accusation by The Economist magazine that Beijing’s policies towards Uygurs and other Muslim minority groups in China’s far west Xinjiang region amount to crimes against humanity.

In a speech on Friday he delivered in Mandarin, Matthew Pottinger, a deputy national security adviser, described the Chinese government’s detention facilities in Xinjiang – which the UN says are holding one million Uygurs and other Muslim minorities – as concentration camps, and implored China’s citizens to learn for themselves what is happening there.

“It is in a spirit of friendship, reflection, and, yes, candour, that I ask friends in China to research the truth about your government’s policies toward the Uygur people and other religious minorities,” he said to a video conference hosted by the think tank Policy Exchange in London.

“Ask yourselves why the editors of The Economist, in a cover article this week, called those policies ‘a crime against humanity’,” he said. “There is no credible justification I can find in Chinese philosophy, religion or moral law for the concentration camps inside your borders.”

The comments were among the sharpest yet from the Trump administration about the human rights situation in Xinjiang, and represent the growing alarm among both political parties in Washington about the widespread human rights abuses believed to be taking place there.