NEW YORK, Sept 07 (Reuters): US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday the United States would use the United Nations General Assembly this month to persuade countries to help "call out" China over treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority.
Asked after a speech at Kansas State University how Washington had been promoting an end to the oppression of Uighurs in China, Pompeo told an audience there: "Insufficiently, because it's still going on."
"We are going to have this UN General Assembly in the third week in September. We'll do a number of gatherings, where our efforts will be to get other countries to sign up to help us call out this activity," Pompeo said.
"We want freedom for those folks. We have lots of challenges with China, but this is about their fundamental unalienable rights for those particular individuals."
Pompeo, an evangelical Christian who has portrayed himself as a champion of religious rights, reiterated past comments, saying that the treatment of the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in China "may well end up being one of the worst stains on the world this century."
"It's of that magnitude," he said, adding that the challenge was to "rally the world" against it.
"We have done so today with some success, but not nearly enough, to call this out and work with the Chinese government, to convince them - to convince the Chinese Communist Party - that this isn't in their best interests ... that it's not the right way to treat ... other human beings," Pompeo said.
In his speech, Pompeo charged that over the past two years in its western region of Xinjiang, China had "tried to brainwash coming on one million Uighur Muslims in internment camps ... to renounce their culture and their faith."
He dismissed Chinese claims that the camps were meant to "educate and to save" people influenced by religious extremism.
China's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
China has consistently denied any mistreatment of Uighurs in what it calls vocational training centers, which it says have been extremely successful in combating extremism and violence.
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