The Chinese government went on the defensive through its propaganda arms Thursday as the United States imposed restrictions on communist officials believed to be involved in gross human rights abuses against its citizens.

“Most Westerners have never been to Xinjiang,” the Global Times reported on the Chinese government’s response to the U.S. State Department’s move:

Almost everybody knows that U.S. policy always regards Muslims as heretics – U.S. President Donald Trump issued the infamous Muslim travel ban soon after he took office. The border wall that the Trump administration promotes has showcased the country’s real attitude toward minority groups. How could they really care about the rights of Muslims living far away in Xinjiang? U.S. government’s moves concerning Xinjiang are going against the betterment of the situation in Xinjiang as well as vital development and prosperity in the region. This shows that adding more Chinese entities to the blacklist and visa restrictions on Chinese officials are obviously geopolitical moves by the U.S. Xinjiang has made remarkable progress, with people enjoying human rights based on peace and stability. Having been through severe terrorist and extremist activities, Xinjiang has successfully protected the lives of numerous people and peace has returned to the region. It has avoided the fate of becoming another Chechnya.

As Breitbart News reported last summer, victims of human rights abuse from around the world met with Trump at the White House as part of the U.S. State Department’s Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, including Jewher Ilham, who shared the plight of her father, a Uyghur scholar sentenced to life in prison in 2014 for speaking out against the Chinese communist government.

Ilham told Trump about the estimated one million or more Uyghur Muslims that the regime has rounded up and put in “re-education camps,” where evidence exists of torture and organ harvesting.

“There was no such freedom for Uighurs in China — not at the school where my father was a professor, not in public, not even in a private house,” Ilham said. “Instead there are signs on the street reminding Uighurs that they are not allowed to be visibly Muslim.”

On Wednesday in an interview with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slammed the Chinese government for its human rights abuses.

“This is not only an enormous human rights violation, but we don’t think it’s in the best interests of the world or of China to engage in this kind of behavior,” Pompeo told PBS.

“The Chinese Embassy in Washington said in a separate statement this week that allegations of human rights abuses are ‘made-up pretexts’ for interfering in Chinese affairs,” the Global Times reported.

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