OK, reader, let’s assume that you were forcibly taken from your family and home to a residential school by age 6. There, you would not be able to speak your native language or practice your native religion. You couldn’t wear your traditional clothing and would be thoroughly regimented. You would not be able to leave the school voluntarily. What actually took place in your new residence and school would be mostly kept from public view. The public would be told that you are being well taken care of and are learning useful vocational skills. You are not allowed to complain about what happens to you. The government is finding ways to settle people on the lands so long used by your families.

You are at a “reeducation” camp. You are being forced to assimilate; or, to put it another way, forced to participate in the genocide of your culture.

So, who are you and where are you?

Your choices are: (1) boarding schools for Native Americans; or, (2) boarding schools for Uighurs currently living in Xinjiang Province in China.

Actually, you could be at either one. Maybe that helps explain why there isn’t that much outrage over what is happening to the Uighurs in China? Whenever the U.S. complains, which it seldom does, about what China is doing to its Uighurs, the Chinese government will bring up what the U.S. did with its Native Americans. V.P. Pence and Sec. of State Pompeo have condemned Chinese policies towards the Uighurs. But, has President Trump applied sanctions on China for these policies?

No. He has several times expressed praise for China’s strongman Xi Jinping without expressing reservations about Xi’s human rights abuses which have become worse over time.

The Chinese will cite that there have been terrorist activities carried out by Uighurs. And, there have been as part of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a group that uses violence to set up an independent East Turkistan. That movement is considered by the U.N. Security Council and by the U.S. government, post 9/11, as a terrorist organization. One could argue that the U.S. and the U.N. have provided the Chinese government with a rationale for their above described policy though, in fact, there have been but a few Uighurs who have conducted terrorist attacks.

Well, how about the “hostiles” among our Native Americans who resisted, by force, being placed on reservations on land that no white man wanted?

Are there significant differences between the two choices noted above? Yes, (1) the Chinese have implanted a thorough going surveillance system to track residents wherever they go using facial recognition cameras and DNA samples tied to a database. But, those kinds of technology were unknown in the later 19th century in the U.S. (2) The Native Americans were NOT U.S. citizens whereas the Uighurs are Chinese citizens. But, does Chinese citizenship entitle the Uighurs to anything like our Bill of Rights? Only in theory. (3) the Uighurs are Muslims while the Native Americans had their own religions. (4) The ETIM is tied to terrorist groups outside of China including the Taliban and Al Qaeda whereas the Native Americans had no such support.

Given our own history with Native Americans and more recently with those detained near our border, what should President Trump do about the human rights abuses carried out against the Uighurs?