U.S. SLAMS CHINA FOR TURNING XINJIANG INTO AN ‘OPEN-AIR PRISON

The US State Department has accused the Chinese government of criminalizing religious expression and turning its entire Xinjiang region, home to the Muslim Uyghur minority, into an "open-air prison," Kyodo News reported.

The department likewise released an annual report on international religious freedom which highlighted the US government's concerns over Beijing's repression of Uyghurs and members of other Muslim groups in Xinjiang through mass arbitrary detention, forced labor, forced sterilization, and other abuses.

"China broadly criminalizes religious expression and continues to commit crimes against humanity and genocide against Muslim Uyghurs and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said upon the release of the 2020 report.

China has consistently said its detention camps are vocational training centers established to pre-emptively combat terrorism and religious extremism. Calling the situation "dire," Daniel Nadel of the State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom said he sees a shift from a "dramatic reliance" on camps for "re-education," or for forced labor and other purposes.

"What the (Chinese) government has created, it's quite an ambitious effort to essentially turn the entire region into an open-air prison," he said at a press conference.

Nadel added that people in the far-western autonomous region are under heavy surveillance and minders are assigned to live among the Uyghurs to keep tabs on them.

WEEKLY FEATURE : TRUEMONEY PHILIPPINES BUCKS THE COVID-19 CHALLENGE