Hilton is reportedly building a hotel on the site of a demolished Uyghur mosque in China.
According to satellite data from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, thousands of mosques are disappearing as the Chinese Communist Party intensifies its ethnic cleansing of the Uyghur people in the country’s Xinjiang region. However, Hilton — an American hospitality firm — is constructing a hotel upon one of the mosque’s ruins.
As The Telegraph reports:
The site where a mosque once stood in the heart of Hotan in China’s Xinjiang region is now under construction to become a commercial tower block that will house a Hampton by Hilton hotel, the Telegraph can reveal.
The mosque, demolished in 2018 based on satellite images analysed for the Telegraph by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, is just one of many to disappear across Xinjiang, as China erases the region’s cultural and religious heritage as part of its forced assimilation of Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslim minorities.
The Telegraph further reports that the sound of daily prayers has been “replaced by the noise of grinding machinery.” Propaganda on the surrounding construction wall invites pedestrians to “warmly celebrate the Communist Party’s 100th anniversary.”
Hilton is one of many Western corporations to face backlash for conducting activities in Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has built nearly 400 concentration camps to “reeducate” and sterilize Uyghurs.
Last year, Disney was the subject of widespread criticism for filming its remake of “Mulan” in the region. The credits for the film thanked the “publicity department of CPC Xinjiang Uighur Autonomy Region Committee,” which plans state propaganda campaigns in the region.
The report of Hilton’s activities comes as members of the G7 condemn the use of forced labor in Xinjiang. A June 13 statement from the White House reads:
The United States and our G7 partners remain deeply concerned by the use of all forms of forced labor in global supply chains, including state-sponsored forced labor of vulnerable groups and minorities and supply chains of the agricultural, solar, and garment sectors — the main supply chains of concern in Xinjiang. Leaders agreed on the importance of upholding human rights and of international labor standards, and committed to protect individuals from forced labor. We welcome the commitment of our G7 partners to ensure all global supply chains are free from the use of forced labor.
During a CNN town hall earlier this year, however, President Biden appeared to dismiss the Chinese Communist Party’s genocide of Uyghurs, chalking it up to differing cultural “norms.”
“If you know anything about Chinese history, it has always been — the time when China has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven’t been unified at home,” the Commander-in-Chief told Anderson Cooper. “So the central — to vastly overstate it — the central principle of Xi Jinping is that there must be a united, tightly controlled China. And he uses his rationale for the things he does based on that.”
“I point out to him: No American President can be sustained as a President if he doesn’t reflect the values of the United States,” Biden said in reference to a conversation with Xi Jinping. “And so the idea I’m not going to speak out against what he’s doing in Hong Kong, what he’s doing with the Uyghurs in western mountains of China and Taiwan, trying to end the One China policy by making it forceful… Culturally, there are different norms that each country and they — their leaders — are expected to follow.”
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.