The United States is poised to take a more aggressive stance toward China’s mistreatment of Uighur Muslims, with both Congress and President Trump speaking out against the communist state.
Trump on Friday is expected to hold a press conference in which he will criticize China, just days after Congress sent to his desk the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, which addresses the communist state’s history of religious persecution.
The bill passed the House of Representatives Wednesday in a near-unanimous vote. It passed the Senate by unanimous consent earlier this month. It is a culmination of a bipartisan public outcry against China following widespread revelations last year that the totalitarian state was pursuing an aggressive persecution of Uighur Muslims in its Xinjiang province.
Trump has not indicated whether or not he will sign the bill, which would require him to impose sanctions on Chinese party leaders, specifically those in Xinjiang, a first in U.S. relations with China. The president on Tuesday did say, however, that he was “taking a look at it very strongly,” along with possible action on Hong Kong, where critics of China’s human rights policies have also raised alarm bells.
Gary Bauer, commissioner at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a State Department-sponsored watchdog, told the Washington Examiner that he hopes Trump will sign the bill and issue sanctions to the “fullest extent” possible. The bill, Bauer said, is a major step forward for religious liberty policy because, for the first time, it “explicitly links U.S. policy toward China to the human rights of Uighur Muslims.”
And yet, he added, sanctioning party leaders because of their treatment of Uighurs should only be the start of a dedicated opposition to “China’s war on faith.”
“The government has initiated crackdowns against Christians, Buddhists, Falun Gong, and others,” he said. “The United States government must stand up for all of these groups and insist that the Communist Party respect their right under international law to practice their faith.”
USCIRF, along with many other international organizations, have for years condemned China for its treatment of religious minority groups. In its annual report this year, the watchdog recommended that U.S. government officials boycott the 2022 Chinese Winter Olympic Games because of the Uigur issue. The group also found in March that, during the coronavirus pandemic, the Chinese regime took advantage of Uighurs, forcing them to continue working in Wuhan factories as the virus ravaged the city.
The coronavirus pandemic heightened a distrust of China that first became widespread during massive protests in Hong Kong last year over the communist regime’s overreach into the semi-autonomous island’s affairs. The combined memories of Hong Kong and the regime’s treatment of Uighurs only compounds that distrust in the pandemic, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton said.
“Governments that treat their own people in such brutal ways would think nothing of lying about a virus death toll to preserve their own power,” he told the Washington Examiner in April.
Cotton is a self-professed China hawk, but the passage of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act prompted elected leaders who do not normally speak on the issue to offer condemnations of the communist state.
“The United States Congress is taking a firm step to counter Beijing’s horrific human rights abuses against the Uighurs,” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said just before the bill’s passage. “We must continue to raise a drumbeat and shine the light of abuse perpetrated by Beijing against the Uighurs whenever we can, from this House floor to the State Department to other multilateral institutions.”
Pelosi appointed Nury Turkel, a Uighur rights activist, to the USCIRF the day before the bill passed. His new role will be in part dedicated to leading Uighur advocacy, according to the organization. Turkel, who was born in a Chinese reeducation camp, fled to the U.S. in 1995. Following the bill’s passage, he said in a statement that he hopes “other countries will follow the U.S. government’s lead and take action on this issue.”
