Opinion | Indonesia must speak up against China on Uygurs. Look at what Gambia did for the Rohingya
- The Southeast Asian nation should use diplomatic platforms such as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to raise the plight of China’s Muslim minorities allegedly being held in internment camps
- The OIC through Gambia has filed a case against Myanmar for its treatment of Rohingya Muslims at the United Nations
On October 15, US Ambassador to Indonesia Joseph R. Donovan Jnr visited one of the country’s largest Muslim organisations, Muhammadiyah, urging its chairman Haedar Nashir to mount pressure on China to end the detention of the Uygur people.
It was one of two encounters with major Muslim groups in which Donovan urged them to join Washington’s diplomatic push for China to end the worsening conditions of the Uygurs in northwest Xinjiang.
But the US diplomat failed to get the response he was seeking.
The United Nations estimates around 1 million Uygurs and people from other largely Muslim minority groups have been detained as part of China’s mass internment programme in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region since early 2017.
China has been accused of running re-education camps for the Uygurs but Beijing has denied the claims, calling them vocational training centres.
