OpinionDon’t expect Donald Trump to step up and get tough on human rights abuses in Xinjiang any time soon

Owen Churchill says the Trump administration has a dismal track record on humanitarian issues, but US lawmakers have been making the right noises about the detention of Muslims in Xinjiang. Trump should listen to them and act

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A policeman stands guard as Muslims arrive for the Eid ul-Fitr morning prayer at the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, Xinjiang, China. Beijing says the heavy police presence is needed to prevent the spread of Islamic extremism, but analysts warn that Xinjiang is becoming an open-air prison. Photo: AFP

Published: 1:00am, 20 Oct 2018Updated: 4:47am, 20 Oct 2018

Of the more than 630 days of Donald Trump’s presidency, not a single one has featured a public condemnation of the extrajudicial internment of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Xinjiang, China.

This isn’t surprising, for two reasons. First is the Trump administration’s dismal track record in humanitarian issues. As the president happily fawns over “tough guys” like Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin and Rodrigo Duterte, his government has steadily chipped away at any prospect that it intends to hold the global community to the universal principles that the US has often espoused.

To offer a few examples: the Trump administration has withdrawn the United States from the UN Human Rights Council over its supposed bias against Israel, cancelled more than US$200 million in aid to Palestine, capped the number of refugees allowed into the US at a near record low of 30,000 (which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had the gall to characterise as “expansive figures”), and forcibly separated children from families at the US-Mexico border.

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The second reason is Trump’s thinly veiled contempt for Islam and active efforts to misrepresent the religion as a threat to American life. To him, any act of violence by a Muslim is proof of the faith’s inherent danger and justification for anti-terrorism policies that disproportionately target those from a Muslim background, such as a travel ban on individuals originating from several predominantly Muslim countries.

In contrast, mass shootings by Caucasian men are dismissed with thoughts and prayers for victims and perfunctory remarks on the need for better mental health provisions – but not gun control, of course.

In the words of Sarah Sewall, former undersecretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights, the Trump administration’s view of human rights “as the rights of Christians” has determined where and why it has chosen to engage around the world and “really narrowed the aperture of human rights policy”.

Sewall, whose previous role has remained vacant since Trump took office – along with a number of other human rights positions – told me she’d be surprised if “protecting the rights of beleaguered Muslim minorities became a significant foreign policy objective in its own right”.

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