Pontiff mentions ethnic group in western China among other targets of persecution; for Beijing, comments are unfounded
In his new book, Pope Francis refers for the first time to Uighurs, an ethnic minority Muslim group in China, as a people “persecuted” for religious reasons.
“I often think of persecuted peoples: the Rohingya, the poor Uighurs, the Yazidi,” says an excerpt from the book “Let’s Dream Together”, a work produced in collaboration with one of the pontiff’s biographers, the British journalist Austen Ivereigh, who presents the Francisco’s vision for a new post-pandemic world.
The pope had previously spoken about Rohingya, persecuted in Myanmar for being Muslims, and about the Yazidi, an Islamic State target group for professing a religion that mixes characteristics of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and different Persian beliefs. But until the publication of his newest book, the leader of the Catholic Church had never included Uighurs in the same category.
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