China's 'Orwellian' Human Rights Crisis Is Just Getting Worse
At least 1 million people are, right this very moment, languishing in what the U.S. military has now deemed "concentration camps" in China. But recent attempts by U.S. officials and lawmakers to push for change have made little difference as a shocking human rights crisis continues to worsen.
In Congress' strongest move yet, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, which would require the creation of a report and a position within the State Department focused on China's crackdown. The bill, which also says President Donald Trump should condemn the abuses, will now head to the Senate floor.
"It is long overdue to hold Chinese government and Communist Party officials accountable for systemic and egregious human rights abuses," the bill's sponsor Florida Senator Marco Rubio said.
The bill's progression comes weeks after the Pentagon said it estimates that up to 3 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities were being held in "concentration camps," one of the first times a U.S. official has used the term usually associated with the Holocaust. The label comes three years after China, in a bid to stamp out religious influence in the northwest region of Xinjiang, began arbitrarily placing Uyghurs in detention and building what has become an inescapable surveillance state.
"The Communist Party is using the security forces for mass imprisonment of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps," Randall Schriver, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said at a press briefing. When asked about the phrase, Schriver
