Chen, 66, has been in his current position since August 2016 and has been accused by the West of spearheading the repressive policies and severe human rights abuses against the 12 million Uyghurs who live in Xinjiang.During his stint as Xinjiang’s party chief, China built up a network of detention camps in which as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been held since 2017 in the name of preventing religious extremism and terrorism.
Though Chen has denied widely documented and credible reports of abuse in the camps, he became the highest-ranking Chinese official to be sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2020 in connection with rights abuses in Xinjiang.
