President Donald Trump encouraged Chinese President Xi Jinping's use of concentration camps to contain Uighur Muslims, former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his upcoming book, "In The Room Where It Happened."
The Chinese president and Trump had a private sitdown at the 2019 G-20 Summit in Japan, where Xi "explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang," according to excerpts of the book published in The Wall Street Journal.
In response to the plan, Bolton wrote, "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do."
He continued, "Beijing’s repression of its Uighur citizens also proceeded apace. Trump asked me at the 2018 White House Christmas dinner why we were considering sanctioning China over its treatment of the Uighurs, a largely Muslim people who live primarily in China’s northwest Xinjiang Province."
Between two to three million Uighur Muslims are reportedly being imprisoned in approximately 465 camps by the Chinese government under the pretense of a counter-terrorism campaign. Survivors who were released from the camps said they've been tortured, refused medical attention and even used as experimental guinea pigs.
Trump even signed The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, which received bipartisan support in the House and the Senate. The bill threatened to levy sanctions against Chinese officials involved in the camps.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.