Hillary Clinton Once Joked About Uighurs Imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay When She Was Secretary of State
This week saw the release of more Hillary Clinton emails, the result of an investigation pressed by House Republicans.Â
Whatever one's view on the appropriateness of the former Secretary of State's email usage, the released emails do offer a window into Clinton's worldview and that of her advisers and peers.
One exchange in particular, about an agreement in Palau — where a group of Chinese Uighurs who were wrongly imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay are now languishing — includes a silly joke about Uighurs serving as swim instructors, dodging Chinese submarines:[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"602872","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"480","style":"font-size: 12px;","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"431"}}]]
The Uighurs are a persecuted Muslim minority in China, where their religious and property rights are regularly denied by authorities; their buildings are often demolished and dissent is violently suppressed. Journalist Eric Margolis has claimed the US has also trained Uighurs to rebel violently against the Chinese regime. At the time this email was written in 2010, a number of Uighurs who had been released from Guantanamo were stuck in a sort of legal limbo in Palau.
Clinton and her aide Jacob Sullivan seemed to view the situation as an occasion for comedy, which seems unbecoming considering they were high officials in the government that created this fate for these people.
