On the 30th Anniversary of Tiananmen Square

PRESS STATEMENT

MICHAEL R. POMPEO, SECRETARY OF STATE 

JUNE 3, 2019

WASHINGTON, DC

On June 4, we honor the heroic protest movement of the Chinese people that ended on June 4, 1989, when the Chinese Communist Party leadership sent tanks into Tiananmen Square to violently repress peaceful demonstrations calling for democracy, human rights, and an end to rampant corruption. 

The hundreds of thousands of protesters who gathered in Beijing and in other cities around China suffered grievously in pursuit of a better future for their country. 

The number of dead is still unknown. 

We express our deep sorrow to the families still grieving their lost loved ones, including the courageous Tiananmen Mothers, who have never stopped seeking accountability, despite great personal risk. 

The events of thirty years ago still stir our conscience, and the conscience of freedom-loving people around the world.
Over the decades that followed, the United States hoped that China’s integration into the international system would lead to a more open, tolerant society. 

Those hopes have been dashed. China’s one-party state tolerates no dissent and abuses human rights whenever it serves its interests. 

Today, Chinese citizens have been subjected to a new wave of abuses, especially in Xinjiang, where the Communist Party leadership is methodically attempting to strangle Uighur culture and stamp out the Islamic faith, including through the detention of more than one million members of Muslim minority groups. 

Even as the party builds a powerful surveillance state, ordinary Chinese citizens continue to seek to exercise their human rights, organize independent unions, pursue justice through the legal system, and simply express their views, for which many are punished, jailed, and even tortured.
We salute the heroes of the Chinese people who bravely stood up thirty years ago in Tiananmen Square to demand their rights. 

Their exemplary courage has served as an inspiration to future generations calling for freedom and democracy around the world, beginning with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in Eastern Europe in the months that followed.
We urge the Chinese government to make a full, public accounting of those killed or missing to give comfort to the many victims of this dark chapter of history. 

Such a step would begin to demonstrate the Communist Party’s willingness to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms. 

We call on China to release all those held for seeking to exercise these rights and freedoms, halt the use of arbitrary detention, and reverse counterproductive policies that conflate terrorism with religious and political expression. 

China’s own constitution stipulates that all power belongs to the people. 

History has shown that nations are stronger when governments are responsive to their citizens, respect the rule of law, and uphold human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Chinese Aggressions

Pompeo promises intervention if Philippines is attacked by China
By Regine Cabato and Shibani Mahtani

Philippines Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin, left, shakes hands with visiting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after their joint news conference in Manila on March 1. 

MANILA — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday that any attack on Philippine aircraft or ships in the South China Sea will trigger a response from the United States under a mutual defense treaty between the two countries, a firm assurance to its longtime ally amid rising Chinese militarization in the contested waters.
“China’s island building and military activities in the South China Sea threaten [Philippine] sovereignty, security and therefore economic livelihood, as well as that of the United States,” said Pompeo, speaking at a joint news conference in Manila, where he landed last night after the conclusion of the Hanoi summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“As the South China Sea is part of the Pacific, any armed attack on Philippine forces, aircraft or public vessels in the South China Sea will trigger mutual defense obligations under Article 4 of our mutual defense treaty,” Pompeo added.
The article spells out that the Philippines and the United States would come to each other’s defense if either is attacked, as such an attack on either party would “be dangerous to its own peace and safety.”
Pompeo’s comments seek to reassure the Southeast Asian country at a time when China is increasingly building military outposts on artificial islands it has claimed for its own in the contested waters. 

China claims it has "historic" rights to the South China Sea, a crucial waterway where one-third of global trade flows, but its claims overlap with that of several nations in the region, including Vietnam and the Philippines.
Pompeo’s visit also comes at a time when the long-standing alliance between the Philippines and the United States is being questioned by some skeptics inside the administration of Rodrigo Duterte, who has been courting investment from and closer ties with China. 

Last November, Xi Jinping visited Manila, the first Chinese leader to make a state visit there in over a decade.
Pompeo, who is making his first trip to Manila as secretary of state, met with Duterte as well as Philippine Foreign Secretary Teddy Locsin.
A pro-China camp in the administration “is using the argument that China is a geographical reality, whereas America is a geopolitical anomaly,” said Richard Heydarian, a Manila-based defense and security analyst. 

“People asking: Do we really need America? That’s so Cold War.”
Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has called for a review of the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty between Washington and Manila, the agreement that guarantees a U.S. military response if the Philippines is to be attacked. 

The Philippine defense establishment has long argued that the language of the document is too vague, especially as China gets more aggressive in the waters off the Philippine archipelago.
A report earlier this month from the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI), run by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, found that China had sent a large fleet of almost 100 ships to stop construction work by the Philippines on an island in the Spratly chain.
After Pompeo’s assurances that the South China Sea is covered in the mutual defense agreement, the “impetus will be on Manila to decide whether that’s good enough,” said Greg Poling, director of the AMTI.
Speaking at their joint news conference Friday, Locsin said the review of the mutual defense treaty was something that “requires further thought,” indicating that he believed Pompeo’s comments were a sufficient guarantee.
“We are very assured, we’re very confident, that the United States has — in the words of Trump to our president: We have your back,” he said.
Speaking to reporters as he flew from Manila and Hanoi, Pompeo said he was “absolutely” concerned about Chinese influence in the Philippines and more broadly across the region. 

In his Friday statement, he warned his counterparts about Chinese state-backed companies — who have promised billions of dollars in big-ticket infrastructure and investment in the Philippines under Duterte.
“American companies . . . operate with the highest standards of transparency, and adherence to the rule of law,” said Pompeo. 

“The same cannot be said for Chinese state-run or state-backed enterprises.”

Pompeo Hits Iran Leader for Silence on China's Detained Muslims

China’s treatment of Muslim minority under increasing scrutiny

By David Tweed

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo

Ayatollah Ali Khamanei 

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo blasted Iran’s top leader for failing to speak out over China’s reported detention of large contingents of its Muslim minority population.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “fancies himself the leader of the Islamic world, but his regime has been totally silent as China — the top buyer of #Iran’s oil — has persecuted and detained hundreds of thousands of its Muslim citizens,” Pompeo wrote on Twitter.
The tweet is likely to cause as much or more dismay in Beijing, where authorities have faced increasing international scrutiny of their treatment of Turkic-speaking Uighurs while also engaged in a trade war with President Donald Trump’s administration. 

Multiple accounts have emerged of secretive “re-education camps” that have detained tens of thousands to “upwards of 1 million” Uighurs, according to a United Nations committee’s assessment.
Pompeo is one of the most senior officials in Trump’s administration to raise the plight of the Uighurs. 

Last month, a group of legislators asked Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to restrict the travel and freeze the assets of top Communist Party officials over their role in the persecution of Uighurs.

Police patrol a village in Hotan prefecture, in China’s East Turkestan colony, in Feb. 2018.

Xi Jinping’s government officially denies problems in East Turkestan, a vast region the size of Alaska bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan that’s home to some 10 million Uighurs.
While Iran’s oil exports to China have dropped, the Asian nation remained the Middle East producer’s biggest customer and its top overall trading partner. 

All crude shipments since July have been made via the Islamic Republic’s own tanker fleet, rather than vessels owned by Chinese shipowners.
Iran recently endured the longest gap without sending oil to China in at least three years, raising speculation that China’s refineries are seeking better terms for cargoes as imminent U.S. sanctions pile pressure onto Tehran.
Iran will keep selling oil in spite of U.S. measures to stop the country’s crude shipments, President Hassan Rouhani said earlier this month. 

Supporters of Muslim Uighur minority burn China's flag outside the Chinese consulate in Istanbul, in July 2018.

Muslim un-solidarity
Governments in Muslim countries from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia have been silent on the Uighurs, even as calls grow in the U.S. and Europe for China to stop its human-rights abuses. 

This week Anwar Ibrahim, who’s in line to become Malaysia’s next premier, became the most prominent Muslim leader to speak out against China, calling for formal talks on the crackdown.
Asked in an interview why Muslim governments have largely remained silent, Anwar said: “They’re scared. Nobody wants to say anything.”