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Miami, FL – U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) appeared on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight to discuss the Chinese government’s oppression of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, including the existence of “political re-education camps’ where upwards of 800,000 to 1 million people are arbitrarily detained.  

Rubio recently wrote an op-ed on China’s campaign against these and other Muslim minorities. Last month, Rubio chaired a Congressional-Executive Commission On China hearing on the serious and deteriorating human rights situation faced by Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. In February, following reports detailing Chinese authorities’ data-banking efforts, Rubio raised concerns with Thermo Fisher Scientific, an American company supplying DNA sequencing equipment to Xinjiang police.

A rough transcript of Rubio’s remarks are transcribed below.

VIDEO: RUBIO DISCUSSES CHINA’S OPPRESSION OF UYGHUR MUSLIMS IN XINJIANG

RUBIO: It’s absolutely true. In fact, one of the outrages here – pictures from Google Earth show us these camps. And so we read these reports about Google looking to partner up in China again, going back to China, but it’s their own pictures that have revealed this reality to the world. They open these places up, they call them re-education camps, where they are basically forcing people to change their names and do all sorts of things. By the way, there’s no history of radicalism among this community of Uyghurs, that’s the first point. But here’s the outrage. Number one: American companies and western companies that have sold surveillance technology that allowed them to sort of put people through this, including an American DNA company – they’re collecting the DNA of these individuals by the way as well forcefully, and using potentially American technology to do it. And what about the Arab world, and the Muslim world and all these countries in the Middle East. Not a single one of them. You know they are always the first to stand up and speak when there’s a ban on travel and this or that but they’ve been totally silent on this issue and the answer is money. There is all this Chinese money flowing all over the world, they’re bribing governments and in this case buying their silence on these atrocious, outrageous human rights violations that give us insight into the true nature of the regime – President Xi in China.

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In fact it’s not mentioned at all in international forums either. Last week, finally, for the first time they were confronted with it and the Chinese were forced to answer some questions by an international organization. But not by some of these countries, many of whom said very little of anything. And if they’ve said it, it’s been very benign – nothing forceful. In essence, if there were a million people of any religion being rounded up anywhere in the world by a western nation, I assure you you’d be hearing about it and rightfully so. But in this case, because these countries have leaders, many of whom have either taken bribes from the Chinese or there’s Chinese investment involved and promises of  more money to come, they have been able to buy their silence. Hypocrisy, outrageous and unacceptable, and I’m glad that this Administration is looking into doing something about it.

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Well I think there’s a general lack of awareness. We’ve talked about this before on your program and I’m glad you’re paying so much attention to it. A significant percentage of the American people are starting to wake up to the reality that for the first time since 1991 we have a near-peer competitor in the world, and that’s China. They don’t seek to compete with us – they seek to overtake us, to replace us in the world. And sadly, we still have American corporations and companies that are so interested in doing business and making money in China that they don’t care about it. So you have tech companies that won’t partner with the Pentagon on defense projects, but partner with a Chinese university that works for their military and who want us to cave. I call the president at least once a week and just continue to encourage him, because this is the first time any administration has finally stood up to China after years and years of abuse and looking the other way.