Is President Trump Doing Enough About the Uyghur Genocide in China?
By: Safa Saleh
Tags: Trump, Muslim, Uyghur Muslims, Uyghur, China

Senators from both sides of the political aisle, such as Marco Rubio, Ben Cardin, and Jeff Merkley have declared that China’s Communist Party is committing genocide against Uyghur and other Turkic-speaking Muslims. This is after it has been reported that an estimated 1.8 million Turkic Muslims, mostly Uyghurs, are detained in internment camps.

These detention camps are to “reeducate” and as the Chinese ruler Xi Jinping stated to “make a shared awareness of Chinese nationhood take root deep in the soul” of the Uyghur and other Muslim minorities.

According to stories from those who have been placed in these camps, the Chinese Uyghurs are subjected to brainwashing and humiliation as they are forced to study communist propaganda for hours every day and chant slogans giving thanks to wishing long life to President Xi Jinping.

Some have been forced to eat pork and drink alcohol as a form of punishment. Other forms of punishment include physical abuse and being forced to stay awake for days without any sleep. Some released detainees even contemplated suicide or witnessed others kill themselves.

Women have said they have been raped and forced to undergo abortions or to have contraceptive devices implanted against their will. As their husbands are away to the internment camps, wives are required to share beds with male Chinese officials.

Families have had their basic right of privacy evaded as Chinese officials watch their every move and utterance with cameras and microphones to monitor families for “extremist behavior.”

As a result of the genocide, nearly half a million Muslim children in Xinjiang have been forcibly removed from their families, placed in state-run boarding schools, and subjected to indoctrination and inhumane treatment.

Although politicians have come out against China for their human rights abuses and there have been protests in states like New York City and Washington, the fight against the genocide must come from the top, President Trump.

It seemed like President Trump was finally the light at the end of the tunnel for these victims when he signed a law in June that imposed sanctions to punish Chinese officials.

This caused Beijing to lash out with a statement by China’s Foreign Ministry stating, “We again urge the U.S. side to immediately correct its mistakes and stop using this Xinjiang-related law to harm China’s interests and interfere in China’s internal affairs.”

However, the effort to stop these human rights abuses quickly dissolved as President Trump failed to impose further sanctions on China. Axios, a major news outlet, asked President Trump why he held off imposing additional sanctions, to which he replied, “Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal.”

“And when you’re in the middle of a negotiation and then all of a sudden you start throwing additional sanctions on — we’ve done a lot. I put tariffs on China, which are far worse than any sanction you can think of.”

He then was asked why he did not use the Global Magnitsky Act. Congress passed this act in 2016 to counter human rights violations. The President said, “nobody’s mentioned it specifically to me with regard to China.”

This tragedy is the closest thing to the Holocaust as over a million Muslims are detained, starved, tortured, and raped as you are reading this sentence in the name of “cleansing” the minds and souls of this particular group.

It is a sad day in history when the leader of the free world turns a blind eye to those who are not as fortunate as Americans to be able to enjoy the privileges that we all share in this country everyday, like freedom of religion and thought.

I guess one should not expect any more from a President who also targeted Muslims by passing an executive order to ban Muslims from entering this country in the name of “fighting religious extremism.”

George Santayana once said: “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”; this has not been any more relevant than today.