After All, Trump's Victory Is Hope For Uighur Muslims In China

Uighur Muslims (Source: Commons Wikimedia)

JAKARTA - When Donald Trump won the presidency of the United States (US) in 2016, the Uighur who is now a US citizen named Erkin Sidick was stunned and disappointed. She and her family selected Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, whose leadership style they preferred. Now, four years on, Sidick is turning his back on Trump.

Not without reason. Sidick said the leader of the Republic was the only candidate strong enough to put pressure on China. This emphasis on China is also expected to end the persecution of the Uighur community in Xinjiang.

Sidick has not returned to Xinjiang, his homeland in western China since 2009. Sidick said in recent years, his family and friends as well as hundreds of students he recommended to study abroad had disappeared from the center of the Uighur camp.

Quoting CNN, Tuesday, October 27, Sidick said that despite his initial doubts about Trump and his largely transactional commitment to the Uighurs, the Trump administration has taken a tough crackdown on China over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Such actions include imposing sanctions and prohibiting items that are potentially made by forced labor.

"To face China requires a very strong leader. Donald Trump is such a leader," he said. "Joe Biden is better diplomatically at making friends around the world but his gentleness won't work for China."

US President Donald Trump (Instagram / @ realdonaldtrump)

The Trump administration, at the start of its term, took little action on reports of alleged human rights abuses in China. The US then began attacking China on the Uighur issue as relations between the two countries deteriorated.

In December 2018, the US State Department said as many as two million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities had been taken to major detention centers in Xinjiang. Former Uighur camp prisoners described being subjected to indoctrination, physical abuse and sterilization.

China insists the Uighurs are in vocational training camps built to tackle the threat of religious extremism. The Chinese side denies allegations of widespread human rights abuses in the region.

With China showing no sign of changing course, some Uighurs living abroad say a US government-led global pressure campaign may be the best chance. It is also hoped that global pressure will push Chinese President Xi Jinping and his government to resign.

"If the whole free world has done what the US government has done, the Chinese communist government may have reconsidered its genocide policy in the Uighur region," said Elfidar Hanim, secretary of the Washington-based Uighur American Association.

On the other hand, Biden is also believed to continue to pressure the US for this problem. In his campaign, Biden issued a statement that China's actions in the region amounted to genocide, a label that the Trump administration would still debate earlier this year.

Some Xinjiang experts and Uighur outcasts point to Biden as a man who is better able to work with other countries to build a coalition against the Chinese government over Xinjiang policies. Others, however, fear that Biden will not be tough enough to face China and end up supporting the Trump administration's uncompromising stance.

What all parties agree on is that more must be done to hold the Chinese government to account. "China should not escape these crimes against humanity," said Hanim.