The White House will raise the fate of Xinjiang’s Uyghur Muslims during the first in-person meeting since President Biden took office between senior U.S. and Chinese officials next week in Alaska.
“Addressing the genocide against Uyghur Muslims is something that will be a topic of discussion with the Chinese directly next week,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday. “Certainly, the position of the United States is that what is happening is genocide.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with China’s top foreign affairs official and a member of the country’s leadership regime, Yang Jiechi and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during a meeting in Anchorage. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will also join the meeting, which will follow Blinken’s first overseas trip to Japan and South Korea. Both are key U.S. allies.
Leaders of the U.S., Japan, India, and Australia are convening Friday in the first “Quad” summit to discuss regional and global issues, with Psaki saying U.S. officials would raise the issue with those allies.
“We’ll look for opportunities to work with other partners on putting additional pressure on the Chinese, but we will also raise it directly,” she added.
Despite criticizing China’s systematic oppression of its Uyghur population, Biden administration officials have resisted calling the atrocities an “ongoing” genocide, as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a memo on former President Donald Trump’s final day in office.
Reports by human rights groups detail forced detainment, rape, and other charges of abuse against an estimated 1 to 2 million Uyghur Muslims and other religious minorities in the western Xinjiang region, allegations China has denied.
During a Feb. 10 phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Biden stressed the administration’s “strong concerns about human rights abuses in Xinjiang,” a White House spokesperson told the Washington Examiner this week.
“The crimes against humanity and genocide that have been and continue to be inflicted on the Uyghurs cannot be ignored, and must be met with serious consequences,” the spokesperson said. “Our China policy is predicated on our core sources of strength, including our values and our ability to work in harmony with like-minded partners and allies. We work with these partners, bilaterally and in multilateral fora, to determine how we can impose costs on China together and ensure that these atrocities stop.”
On Wednesday, Blinken said China should permit outside access to the country’s far western region, where much of China’s Uyghur population lives.
“I think it would be very important, if China claims that there is nothing going on, that it gives access to the international community,” Blinken said.
