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“Shame On Brookings” As Institution Fellow Denies Uyghur Genocide

WASHINGTON, April 9, 2021 – Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has criticized the US genocide designation against China for its treatment of Uyghurs in East Turkistan (renamed Xinjiang by Beijing) in his recent Washington Post article, “The U.S. has very little to gain by overdemonizing China.”

O’Hanlon wrote that China’s concentration camps “have been horrendous” but tempered this with a claim that “Detentions, (..) forced sterilizations and even some forced abortions” merely “require strong pushback” going on to say “(B)ut none of this equates to genocide.”

It is not O’Hanlon’s first run in with controversy as the 59-year-old was once dubbed “among the biggest cheerleaders for the (Iraq) war” for his apparent backing of Bush administration policies in the Middle East.

“It is shameful that the Brookings Institution, a top foreign policy think tank, employs someone who is denying an ongoing genocide and providing cover for China,” says Prime Minister Salih Hudayar of the East Turkistan Government in Exile. “If Brookings has any respect for humanity, they should issue an apology and fire Michael O’Hanlon.”

Hudayar himself escaped China as a political refugee and victim of China’s violence against activists.

Over 100 of his relatives have been taken to concentration camps since 2017, where four have been killed.

He recently spoke to The Taiwan Times.

“Four of my relatives were killed since 2017. Many other Uyghurs like me had their relatives killed as well,” Hudayar wrote to O’Hanlon in a Tweet on Thursday. “PLA veterans testified that they engaged in massacres of entire Uyghur villages post-2013. Uyghurs are killed for their organs and women sterilized. This is GENOCIDE!” he continued.

Prime Minister Salih Hudayar

In addition to being the Prime Minister of the East Turkistan Government in Exile, the democratically elected official body representing East Turkistan (renamed Xinjiang) and its people, he is also the founder of the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement.

As several activists living outside of China have endured and reported, Prime Minister Hudayar and his family are victims of a constant barrage of threats of extreme violence, intimidation, cyber-attacks, and more.

Mark Buckton

Mark is a journalism vet of 20 years with most of those years spent in Tokyo, Japan, as a columnist for The Japan Times and numerous other publications. His work has appeared on CNN, in the BBC, NPR, and in several dozen other media forms and publications across five continents.