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US President Donald Trump experienced criticism after saying he held off on sanctions against China over human rights violations as he was in the middle of a major trade deal. Making a great trade deal with China meant not imposing additional sanctions on the mass internment of Uighur and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang detention camps. President said in an interview with Axios and said, “I made a great deal, $250 billion potentially worth of purchases. And by the way, they’re buying a lot, you probably have seen. And when you’re in the middle of a negotiation and then all of a sudden you start throwing additional sanctions on, we’ve done a lot. I put tariffs on China, which are far worse than any sanction you can think of”.

Point to be noted that the Speaker of US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi also criticized Trump’s response to the Chinese government’s campaign of brutal repression. She said, “If America doesn’t speak out for human rights in China because of commercial issues, we lose all moral authority to speak out for human rights any place in the world. President Trump’s admission that he is looking the other way and enabling one of the worst human rights atrocities of our time in order to ink a trade deal is appalling”. It is noteworthy that about one million Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslim minority groups are believed to be in the Chinese re-education camps.

Trump’s confirmation of the sanction delay came after former National Security Adviser John Bolton claimed that President Trump informed Chinese President Xi Jinping the camps were exactly the right thing to do. Bolton’s upcoming book, ‘The Room Where it Happened’ says the president backed the camps during a conversation with Xi at a 2019 G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan. He wrote in the book, “Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do”. President Trump said, “Such as the systematic use of indoctrination camps, forced labor, and intrusive surveillance to eradicate the ethnic identity and religious beliefs of Uighurs and other minorities in China”.