(TibetanReview.net, Jan28’21) – Following his confirmation to the post, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has on Jan 27 said his view that Chinese officials were engaged in genocide against the Uyghur in Xinjiang province had remained unchanged. Blinken had earlier agreed with his predecessor Mike Pompeo’s Jan 19 declaration that China was committing genocide in Xinjiang, or East Turkestan to its independence campaigners. Also, the Biden Administration’s new UN ambassador pledged to hold China to account in the international body.
“My judgment remains that genocide was committed against the Uyghurs and that has not changed,” the ANI news service Jan 28 quoted Blinken as saying at a press briefing on Jan 27.
Speaking on the current US-China ties, Blinken has said, “It’s not a secret that the relationship between the United States and China is arguably the most important relationship in the world going forward. It’s going to shape the future that we all live in. And increasingly that relationship has some adversarial aspects to it, it has competitive ones and it also has cooperative ones.”
It is in the interest of the United States to cooperate with China on climate change, though that fits within the larger context of areas of concern between the two countries, he has added.
Before Blinken, President Joe Biden’s nominee for UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield had said Jan 27 that the State Department was reviewing its designation of China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other minority groups in the Xinjiang as “genocide.”
During her Senate confirmation hearing, Thomas-Greenfield also pledged to hold China to account in the international body and expressed deep regret for a 2019 speech at a university event backed by a Chinese government-funded organization.
“When America shows up — when we are consistent and persistent — when we exert our influence in accordance with our values – the United Nations can be an indispensable institution for advancing peace, security, and our collective well-being,” edition.cnn.com Jan 27 quoted her as telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Jan 27.
“If instead we walk away from the table, and allow others to fill the void, the global community suffers – and so do American interests,” she said, apparently referring to the US quitting the UN Human Rights Council under the Trump administration.
The report said Thomas-Greenfield, a respected career diplomat who was forced out of the State Department at the beginning of the Trump administration, faced repeated questions about a speech she gave at a Confucius Institute event in Oct 2019 at Savannah State University, a historically Black university.
Many Confucius Institutes, including the one at Savannah State, have shuttered in recent times amid allegations that their agenda was to promote Chinese government’s false propaganda under the garb of providing Chinese language and culture education.
