“President Xi Jinping has imposed China’s most sweeping internment program since Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, when more than one million people were killed and millions of others were imprisoned, tortured and humiliated.
Citing credible reports, a United Nations panel last month said up to one million Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority, are being held in detention camps without benefit of any formal legal process. The repression is severe enough to have raised concerns even within the Trump administration — not known for a preoccupation with human rights abroad — and the administration is weighing possible sanctions against the regime, a step that justice clearly demands.
Mr. Xi is China’s most powerful modern leader, and he is turning his country into an economic and political powerhouse. But his achievements are deeply tainted by human rights abuses, including the repression of the Uighurs, the largest of the Muslim ethnic groups in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China.”
Source: Opinion | Will Donald Trump Stand Up to China? – The New York Times
David Lindsay: I support this editorial, but not holding my breath.
Here are some good comments which I endorsed:
I do hate at this point to tattle
D. Trump is outmatched in this battle,
Purely on IQ’s
Trump is bound to lose
The bars of his Playpen he’ll rattle.
President Trump does not care two hoots about human rights. He instead admires dictators and autocrats. He could be hypocritical in many things but not when it comes to administration of totalitarian regimes.
How can we accuse China of violating the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights when was are the ONLY industrialized country that has never ratified that pact?
Our history of standing up for human rights in other countries has been based on self-interest. Why would we intervene on behalf of a people with no oil or strategic value?
I will say that while our own history of human rights violations is nothing to brag about, we have made progress, albeit uneven, and are doing better than many places. We need to hold the belief that we are committed to human rights here and abroad and that this commitment should be renewed by this administration.
The one thing that stymies my imagination is Donald Trump making a speech in sympathy with the Uighurs.