Politics

China-EU Panelists Face Awkward Human-Rights Question in Hamburg

  • Question about detainees in Xinjiang prompts silence at first
  • EU representative says many officials are ‘greatly concerned’

Police patrol a village in China's western Xinjiang region on Feb. 17, 2018.

Photographer: Ben Dooley/AFP/Getty Images

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An uncomfortable question at Europe-China forum in Hamburg shows how Beijing’s mass detention of Muslims is complicating its diplomatic agenda around the globe.

The query came during a panel on China between six European and one Chinese businessman at the Hamburg Summit on Monday. Could China’s detention of as many as 1 million ethnic Uighurs and Kazakhs in “transformation through re-education” camps in its far western region of Xinjiang undercut European-Chinese relations?