Washington: A bipartisan group of US lawmakers has alleged that the Trump administration has taken ‘no meaningful action’ on China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.
“The administration has taken no meaningful action in response to the situation in Xinjiang,” CNN reported quoting an excerpt from a letter written by lawmakers to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The group, led by House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, urged the Trump administration to reveal its plans for “holding Beijing accountable”
The letter further read, “over a million Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities have been interned in ‘political re-education camps’ without due process as part of a broader attempt to wipe out their separate identity, language, and history.”
“Global responses to these abuses have been insufficient. Of particular concern are reports of US companies that may be contributing to Beijing’s persecution of Uighurs through their support or commercial ties to Hikvision and Dahua — two Chinese tech giants that have profited from the surge of security spending in Xinjiang,” the letter added.
The situation in Xinjiang has drawn harsh criticism from across the globe. According to a report by the US government, as many as two million Uighurs are estimated to have been imprisoned in huge detention centres in China’s far west.
The Uighur is a Muslim majority in Xinjiang province, situated in the western part of China and is officially designated as an autonomous region. According to experts, over one million Uighurs have been detained in internment camps where they are forced to undergo forceful re-education or indoctrination.
Last month, Turkey had slammed China for its “systematic assimilation policy towards Uighur Turks,” labelling it a “great embarrassment for humanity” while urging Beijing to shut down the “concentration camps”.
Beijing has refuted claims of clamping down on the Uighurs, outlining that only people who have committed minor offences when involved in terrorist activities are made to go through vocational training at “vocational education institutions”.
[source_without_link]ANI[/source_without_link]