US State Dept: Human Rights Abuses Abound Worldwide

WASHINGTON, March 31, 2021 – Human rights abuses abounded across the globe in 2020, the U.S. State Department concluded Tuesday in an annual review of how the world’s governments treat their people, according to VOA News.

“The trend lines on human rights continue to move in the wrong direction,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said to reporters.

US Secretary of State – Antony Blinken –
C: U.S. Department of State

Responding to the report, Prime Minister Salih Hudayar of the East Turkistan Government in Exile – the democratically elected official body representing East Turkistan and its people said “The U.S. State Department should launch a Ministerial to Advance Human Rights worldwide, similar to the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom.”

“Strong and meaningful actions also need to be taken against governments violating human rights,” Hudayar added.

Blinken cited numerous countries the U.S. considers offenders of basic human rights.

“In China, government authorities committed genocide against Uyghurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and crimes against humanity, including imprisonment, torture, enforced sterilization, and persecution against Uyghurs and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups,” Blinken said.

The report on China said Beijing “continued to imprison citizens for reasons related to politics and religion. Human rights organizations estimated tens of thousands of political prisoners remained incarcerated, most in prisons and some in administrative detention. The government did not grant international humanitarian organizations access to political prisoners.”

“The U.S. can take meaningful action to end the genocide of Uyghurs by bringing East Turkistan to the agenda of the UN Security Council, prosecuting China’s diplomats under US Code Section 1091, increasing tariffs, applying more sanctions, boycotting the Beijing 2022 Olympics, and recognizing East Turkistan as a Captive Nation,” said Prime Minister Hudayar.

Leaked documents have also revealed new details around the detention and ill-treatment of Uighur Muslims in China.

In related news, the BBC on Wednesday said it had relocated its China correspondent, John Sudworth, to Taiwan, a move that came after Chinese government attacks on both the reporter and the broadcaster over coverage of the Uyghurs in the country’s [East Turkistan] Xinjiang region.

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.