Both the Biden and Trump Administrations repeatedly condemned China’s persecution of Uyghurs and formally declared the country’s treatment of the mostly Muslim minority group a genocide. The Trump Administration passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, imposing sanctions on individuals and entities responsible for human rights abuses against Uyghurs, and the Biden Administration recently designated Uyghurs a priority group for refugee resettlement.
But all that, it turns out, has been mostly talk.
The United States has admitted a grand total of zero Uyghur refugees in the past two fiscal years. In FY2019, only one Chinese national was admitted to the U.S. as a refugee; it is unclear if that individual was a member of the Uyghur minority, which mostly live in China’s northwest region of Xinjiang.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Experts say the main reason for the lack of Uyghur refugees is logistical: it’s next to impossible for Uyghurs in China, most of whom are under extraordinary state surveillance, to access refugee resettlement systems. When Uyghurs do manage to escape to a foreign country, those countries face immense pressure from China to return would-be refugees.
But others argue that U.S. lawmakers, by embracing rhetoric like genocide without providing more effective humanitarian assistance, put themselves in a moral bind. “Why would you want to make a lot of noise about increasing the allowance for refugees when that just might be a meaningless gesture that maybe leads China to be even tougher in the way it treats Uyghurs at home?” says Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.
Accessing refugee systems
China has been detaining millions of Uyghurs in mass detention camps in recent years, and roughly 11 million more live in constant fear that the government could detain them or their family members for an indefinite amount of time, according to details uncovered by The New…
Source : time
