is the US’s Response to the Uyghur Human Rights Crisis in China Appropriate?

The human rights violations carried out by the Chinese government against Uyghur and other minority Muslim groups such as Kazakhs and Uzbeks in the semi-automonous region of Xinjiang should be condemned in all respects. Since 2017, China has cracked further down on the ethnic minority groups at home and abroad, asserting that separatist and extremist ideologies stemming from the region are domestic security threats. This has led the CCP to create a system of “preventative repression” in Xinjiang. As a result, as many as two million muslims have been imprisoned in re-education camps, effectively concentration camps. There are estimated to be over one thousand of these camps, all forcing the detained into renouncing their religion and pledging loyalty to the Chinese Commuist Party, while being subject to extensive surveillance and torture. Reportedly, detained women have experienced forced sterilization and sexual abuse, which indicate repressive population control measures that might fall into the UN’s legal criteria for genocide, according to the US Comission on International Religious Freedom and many other sources. 

Considering the nature of this issue, the US-China Strategic Studies Organization and its writers condemn the human rights crisis occurring in Xinjiang, as well as other human rights abuses around the world. Each piece acknowledges that the issue is a human rights crisis, and assess how well the United States under the Trump Administration has responded to it. If you have further questions or concerns, please reach out to the organization at and the individual writers.