Washington: Pakistan has been facing humiliation at the hands of China, be it then the issue of Uighur Muslims persecution in Xinjiang or now the evacuation of its own citizens form coronavirus-hit Hubei province, a US-based security expert has said.

Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said in its article published by The National Interest magazine that despite being an Islamic state of the modern era, Pakistan fails to raise the issue of Muslims in Xinjiang.

"The Pakistani press regularly covers the plight of Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya Muslims. Pakistani charities work in Chechnya. There is no shortage of the terrorist groups Pakistan sponsors who target India and are motivated more by religion than nationalism," the expert said.

"And, yet, when it comes to China's incarceration of more than a million Uighur Muslims--solely because they are Muslim--Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been silent on one hand and on the other he has both defended China's repression of its Muslims and persecuted for China the Uighurs in Pakistan," he added.

The expert said that while the sister city twinning is a common diplomatic practice in order to advance tourism and ties between the world's major cities, China and Pakistan have taken this to a new level with provincial twining.

"Recently, Pakistan's mission in Beijing gave a draft memorandum of understanding to the Chinese Foreign Ministry in order to establish sister province relations between Xinjiang and Gilgit-Baltistan. Not only, therefore, is Khan cowed by Chinese pressure to the point that he must turn a blind eye to the greatest repression of Muslims in the 21st century but he now seeks to honour the Chinese province that is at the epicentre of Chinese anti-Muslim repression", said Rubin.

It further added, "Even if Khan is motivated by the implied threat to treat the people of the disputed Gilgit-Baltistan region like China treats the Xinjiang, that does not paper over the implied endorsement of Beijing's Islamophobic leadership."

The coronavirus abandonment of Pakistani students in Wuhan further humiliates Pakistan.

Almost every other country--including India--has evacuated its citizens from the coronavirus epicentre. While Imran Khan spends a great deal on himself, his foreign travel, and the military, he has left Pakistan's public health infrastructure a shamble.

"Khan knows that corruption and disorganisation mean that medical quarantine will not work in Pakistan, which is why he seeks to keep those potentially infected abroad. China, meanwhile, cares little for the Pakistanis who remain within its territory," said Rubin.

He further said, "To be Pakistani in the age of Imran Khan means to suffer in silence at the back of the line."