How are we to describe the abominations being carried out in Xinjiang by the Chinese Communist Party? What word is apt for the concentration camps, the mass sterilizations, the deportations, and the slave gangs? Repression? Ethnic cleansing? Extermination?

The Uighurs on the receiving end of these atrocities asked for one designation above all: “genocide.” On his final day, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave them what they wanted, pronouncing the freighted word and leaving it to the Biden administration to decide what to do about it.