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US raises China’s Uighur problem with Indonesian Muslim groups
The United States ambassador to Indonesia is encouraging Indonesia's grassroots Muslim organizations to speak out against China's alleged mistreatment of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province.
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Ethnic Uighurs take part in a protest march to demand the European Union call upon China to respect human rights in the Xinjiang region. (AFP/Emmanuel Dunand)
T
he United States’ envoy to Jakarta has begun a “long overdue” move to engage with leaders of Indonesia’s two largest Muslim organizations, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), as it looks for allies to pressure China over its alleged human rights abuses against the Uighur minority.
Muhammadiyah welcomed the move and expected the US to set an example in handling human rights abuses around the world – including in Yemen, where a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia has simmered since 2015.
US Ambassador to Indonesia Joseph R. Donovan Jr. on Tuesday visited the Muhammadiyah headquarters in Central Jakarta to meet group chairman Haedar Nashir and encourage the organization to speak out against China’s treatment of the Uighur minority.
“I encouraged Muhammadiyah to continue to speak out against the repression of the Uighur minority in China, and we agreed to meet again and to work closer together on all these issues,” he told reporters in Jakarta after the meeting.
The envoy said he wanted to express the US’ concerns about the repression of “perhaps more than 1 million” Uighurs in China's northwestern province.
A United Nations panel of human rights experts said last year that it had received many credible reports that 1 million ethnic Uighurs in China were being held in what appeared to be a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy”.
China has accused the US of meddling in its internal affairs, instead describing the complexes in remote Xinjiang as "vocational training centers" set up to stamp out extremism and give people new skills. The Chinese Embassy in Jakarta was not immediately available for comment.
