The genocide that’s no longer ‘trending’

Remember the Turkic-speaking Uyghur people of Xinjiang in northwestern China? The Chinese Communist Party has been imprisoning them in concentration camps by the millions and subjecting them to brutality and indoctrination. In 2021, the first Trump administration sounded the alarm, equating the massive and ongoing crackdown to genocide. A host of nations sanctioned goods that China produced using the Uyghurs’ forced labor, while human rights activists and media outlets frequently spotlighted their suffering and pushed for change. But today, the Chinese government’s genocide of the Uyghurs is seldom discussed. An analysis by gzero found that only 0.03 percent of current English-language news articles discuss the Uyghurs, down from 0.19 percent at the time of the genocide designation. Analysts say this is due to the second Trump administration deemphasizing human rights, China reshaping international perceptions, and the world’s “atrocity attention” shifting toward more familiar crises such as Ukraine and Gaza. But the fading attention doesn’t mean the suffering has faded. The Trumpet continues to warn that the horrors underway in Xinjiang today are only the start of a dark era the world is descending into.