On the eve of Xi’s visit to the United States, Uighur group urged Trump to bring human rights issues to the negotiating table

While Xi Jinping is about to visit Washington, overseas Uighur organizations are pushing the U.S. government not to let economic, trade, security and geopolitical issues completely squeeze the human rights agenda.The World Uighur Congress on September 18 issued a message that groups including the Uighur Human Rights Project, the Uighur Movement, the Uighur American Association and other organizations wrote to U.S. President Trump, urging him to directly raise Uighur human rights issues when meeting with Xi Jinping.

The open letter pulls the focus back from intergovernmental negotiations such as tariffs, chips, and rare earth in Xinjiang. Participating groups demand that the U.S. government discuss issues such as detention, forced labor, transnational repression and Uighur cultural and religious rights at the highest level of contact, and call on the U.S. to continue implementing human rights policies related to Xinjiang.

For these organizations, the question is not only whether the word “human rights” will appear in a diplomatic conversation, but whether the United States will still take Xinjiang’s human rights policy as part of bilateral relations when dealing with trade and security interests with Beijing.

The Xinjiang issue has entered the U.S. legislation, sanctions and supply chain regulation system in recent years.The U.S. government and Congress have previously taken a series of measures around forced labor, corporate supply chain and relevant official responsibilities; while Beijing has long denied external allegations of systematic human rights violations in Xinjiang and described the policy as counter-terrorism, de-radicalization and development measures.

A 2022 Xinjiang assessment by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights believes that mass arbitrary detention and related practices against Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim groups could constitute international crimes, especially crimes against humanity. The Chinese government rejected this assessment, saying it was based on false information and was politically manipulated. Since then, evidence, responsibility and international policy around Xinjiang have continued to be the focus of disputes between the United Nations, governments and human rights organizations.

Uighur activists overseas have long that they themselves or their relatives in China have been under pressure. U.S. justice and law enforcement have also handled cases involving cross-border surveillance, harassment and agency activities in recent years. The legal facts of individual cases need to be judged on the basis of court documents, but overseas community security has become an independent policy area when the U.S. deals with human rights issues in China.

Thus, the September 18 public letter provided a different viewpoint from the trade summit report: as the Trump administration and the Xi Jinping administration discuss tariffs, technology, energy and regional security, the affected communities abroad are trying to ensure that human rights issues don’t disappear from the negotiating table.

For Xi, Xinjiang policy is not merely a matter of local governance. Since the 2010s, Xinjiang security and national policy has been promoted under the highly concentrated political system of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and its international consequences have extended to trade restrictions, corporate compliance, diplomatic relations and security of overseas communities.