Pope Francis spoke for the first time about the persecution of the Muslim Uyghur minority.
"I often think of the persecuted peoples: the Rohingyas, the poor Uyghurs, the Yazidis - what Daesh
(editor's note, the Islamic State group)
did to them is truly cruel - or the Christians of Egypt and Pakistan killed by bombs which exploded while they were praying in church ”, confides the sovereign pontiff in a book unveiled on Monday, entitled in French“ A time for change ”(Flammarion).
The Vatican has never officially spoken out on the persecution of Uyghurs, even though two Asian cardinals did so last summer.
On October 22, the Vatican and China renewed for two years a delicate agreement on the appointment of bishops.
Washington had previously called on the Pope to denounce all religious persecution in Communist China, against Catholics but also against the Uyghur minority.
The Uyghurs are the main ethnic group in Xinjiang (northwest China).
According to human rights organizations, more than a million people have been interned there in “camps”.
China, for its part, claims that these are "vocational training centers".
In his book written with the help of his British biographer Austen Ivereigh (released on December 2), the Pope takes a closer look at the Rohingya people, a Muslim minority persecuted in Burma, many of whom have taken refuge in neighboring Bangladesh.
“I have a special affection for the Rohingya people.
The Rohingya are the most persecuted group on earth right now;
as far as I can, I try to be close to them because I like them very much.
They are neither Catholics nor Christians, and they are our brothers and sisters, a poor and abused people on all sides who do not know where to turn ”, comments François.
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“Right now in Bangladesh, there are thousands of them in refugee camps with the Covid-19 unleashed”, he adds, speaking of an “injustice that cries out to Heaven”.
At the end of 2017, the Pope went to Burma and then to Bangladesh, a country where he had met Rohingya refugees, asking them "forgiveness" for the harm they suffered.