While in power, President Trump often received harsh words from Europe and Latin America, but it was a tender caress compared to the criticism from China.

The Communist Party, which first cautiously welcomed Trump's victory in 2016, was furious because of his actions on the Uigur issue.

When the US administration presented the bill "the Uygur Human Rights policy act", the Beijing government called it a vicious attack on China and said that it was a ruthless defamation of the country's anti-terrorist and de-radicalization work.

In short, the proposal sought to identify and punish, in the form of sanctions, persons responsible for serious physical or unlawful abuses of minority groups in Xinjiang. 

Trump is away from politics, but among Uighurs praise the law known as "the Uygur Act".

In July 2020, sanctions were imposed on four high-ranking Chinese politicians in Xinjiang and their closest relatives, they are banned from entering the United States and any assets in the United States have been frozen. 

Arbitrary arrests

What the outside world calls internment camps is considered by the Communist Party to be "a center for adjustment through education".

The Chinese government, which does not want to say how many Uighurs and other Muslims are locked up, believes that it is an effective way to fight religious extremism, but also poverty as the detainees are allowed to participate in vocational training.

But, as we know, those sent to camps do not get a trial, they do not have the right to a lawyer and it is not possible to appeal the authorities' decision.

According to the UN, more than one million Uighurs were locked up between 2017 and 2019.

The world has been engulfed by the pandemic over the past year, but in Xinjiang a new step was taken in assimilation policy.

It is already known that children, with a parent in a retraining camp, were sent to state boarding schools to be brought up to be loyal to the Communist Party.

In the prefecture of Hotan live almost exclusively Uighurs and there the authorities believe that it is important that even the youngest children are brought up in the "right" way.

Preschools where Uighur is spoken and which are close to the children's homes will be replaced by Mandarin-language boarding schools.

On Saturdays and Sundays, the children will be allowed to stay with their parents.

The 5-2 method so popular in the west has a completely different meaning in western China.   

The United States and the European Union are doing something together

New testimonies of abuse, razor-sharp satellite images of newly built camps and "school reforms" in Hotan are forcing EU politicians to sharpen their pen.

Just before Christmas, the European Parliament adopted a resolution sharply criticizing the one-party dictatorship and the ministers of the European Council have adopted new rules that will allow the EU to impose targeted sanctions in a similar way as the United States has already done.

At stake is also a huge investment agreement between the EU and China that has been negotiated for seven years. 

During President Trump's time in power, there was a lack of will to synchronize the EU and the United States to persuade the Chinese government to change its policy in Xinjiang.

But President Biden has sent clear signals that he wants the United States and the European Union to work together on human rights.

It is perhaps even more troublesome for Xi Jinping than new revelations about abuses against Uighurs and other minorities.