Beijing’s indoctrination centers for Muslim Uighurs are stark violations of human rights.
The Trump administration may not be the most unimpeachable source when it comes to human rights, but the head of the State Department’s bureau for human rights, Michael Kozak, was dead on when he said China’s mass incarceration of Muslim minorities was “just remarkably awful.”
Mr. Kozak made the comments on Wednesday as the State Department presented its annual report on human rights around the world, an event at which his boss, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, declared that China was “in a league of its own when it comes to human rights violations.”
That’s a tough call in today’s world. But China’s brutal campaign to strip Uighur and other Turkic minorities in the Xinjiang region of their culture, religion and identity through a network of secretive re-education camps must rank among the more outrageous continuing violations in the world. What makes it all the more galling is the Beijing government’s feigned umbrage whenever the camps are raised, and its absurd efforts to depict them as China’s contribution to the war on terrorism.
After initially denying the existence of the camps, China in October began a campaign to portray them as “campuses,” “vocational training centers” and “boarding schools” intended to bring Uighurs into the modern era.
China has made direct news reporting from Xinjiang all but impossible, giving access only to carefully monitored official tours. On one, Reuters reported that camp inmates praised their new life and sang, in English, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.
