30 TheEconomistJune 27th 2020
1I
t was a rare spark of hope for China’s Ui-
ghur ethnic group, which forms nearly
half the population of the far western re-
gion of Xinjiang. On June 17th President Do-
nald Trump signed the Uighur Human
Rights Policy Act. It aims to punish Chinese
officials for human-rights abuses in Xin-
jiang, where since 2017 perhaps 1m people,
including about one in ten Uighurs, have
been thrown—without trial—into a new
gulag. They have been selected for this
“training” because of habits such as pray-
ing too often to Allah, showing too much
enthusiasm for their Turkic culture or re-
fusing to watch state television.
Just before Mr Trump took up his pen
came a sharp sting. John Bolton, a former
national security adviser, said that Mr
Trump had assured China’s president, Xi
Jinping, that building the prison camps
was “exactly the right thing to do”. Whether
Mr Trump spoke out of callousness or igno-
rance is unclear. Mr Xi may well have told
him that the camps were necessary for
curbing terrorism, and that the internees
had all shown dangerous tendencies. This
is China’s official line. Mr Trump should
have seen through it, but he does not al-ways read his briefing papers.
Still, the Uighurs’ supporters cheered
Mr Trump’s signing of the bill—they take
help where they can get it. The act has few
teeth. America already had a law allowing
the president to impose sanctions, such as
the freezing of assets or the denial of visas,
on foreign officials who violate human
rights. This one goes further only by nam-
ing a couple: Chen Quanguo, the Commu-
nist Party chief of Xinjiang, and his former
deputy, Zhu Hailun. (On June 19th Mr
Trump, in an interview with Axios, a news
website, said he had not imposed such
sanctions already because he did not want
to jeopardise trade talks with China.) The
Trump administration had already black-
listed several dozen companies deemed
complicit in the atrocities, including by
providing surveillance technology. The
new law does not mandate much more, ex-
cept by requiring the American govern-
ment to report on how the Uighurs are re-
pressed and who is doing it.
Several countries have castigated China
for the largest arbitrary roundup of a mi-
nority anywhere since the second world
war, but few have done much about it. Chi-na says it gives the inmates vocational
training. But they are also forced to criticise
Islam, shave off their beards, eat pork,
speak Mandarin instead of their own Turk-
ic tongues and praise Mr Xi. They are not
told when they will be released.
In October the European Parliament
showed a bit of backbone by awarding the
Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to
Ilham Tohti, a Uighur academic who was
jailed for life in 2014 on a charge of separat-
ism. But firms and sports leagues doing
business in China have mostly ignored
pleas by activists that they denounce Xin-
jiang’s horrors. Sweden has declared that
any Uighur applying for asylum can be as-
sumed to have suffered persecution. But
some countries, such as Cambodia, Egypt
and Thailand, have sent Uighur refugees
back to China—and certain punishment.
China’s economic power has helped it
avoid censure. On October 29th European
governments and the Trump administra-
tion signed a letter at the unpublicly con-
demning China. In response China recruit-
ed about 50 other countries, including
many with majority-Muslim populations,
to endorse the official story that the camps
are part of a counter-terrorism strategy that
has made Xinjiang safer. The pandemic
may have helped China, too, by diverting
everyone’s attention.
Oddly, China has recorded fewer than
100 cases of covid-19 among Xinjiang’s
nearly 22m people. The official numbers
may not be accurate, but it is possible that
Uighurs have been so effectively walled off
from the rest of the world that they haveHuman rights in XinjiangWalk on by
NEW YORK
Donald Trump is not the only foreign leader who fails to stand up for the UighursChina
31 AnalarminglawforHongKong
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