The US Congress on Wednesday authorized sanctions against Chinese officials over the mass incarceration of Muslim Uighurs.
The US House of Representatives voted with just one dissent in favor of the Uighur Human Rights Act.
Rights groups say that at least 1 million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region have been incarcerated in what Beijing calls “re-education” camps.
Photo: Reuters
“If America does not speak out against human rights [violations] in China because of some commercial interest, then we lose all moral authority to speak out on human rights violations any place in the world,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.
House Committee on Foreign Affairs member Michael McCaul accused China of “state-sponsored cultural genocide.”
Beijing is out to “completely eradicate an entire culture simply because it doesn’t fit within what the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] deems ‘Chinese,’” McCaul said. “We can’t sit idly by and allow this to continue. Our silence will be complicit and our inaction will be our appeasement.”
The legislation requires the US administration to determine which Chinese officials are responsible for the “arbitrary detention, torture and harassment” of Uighurs and other minorities.
The US would then freeze any assets the officials hold in the world’s largest economy and ban their entry into the country.
The law specifically mentions Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region CCP Secretary Chen Quanguo (陳全國). Previously posted in Tibet, Chen has built a reputation for clamping down on restive minorities.
China initially denied the mass incarceration, but has since described the camps as centers aimed at discouraging Islamic radicalism.
After an earlier version of the law passed by the US Senate in December last year, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Washington of hypocrisy in its own “counterterrorism” efforts.
“This bill deliberately smears the human rights condition in Xinjiang, slanders China’s efforts in deradicalization and counterterrorism, and viciously attacks the Chinese government’s Xinjiang policy,” ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) said.
US Senator Marco Rubio urged US President Donald Trump to sign the act “without delay.”
The House had previously passed a tougher version of the Uighur act that would restrict exports of technology involved in mass surveillance. The Senate stripped out the export provision to ensure unanimous passage, letting Trump handle technology issues.
The final version of the act also requires a classified report by US intelligence on Xinjiang as well as a study led by the FBI on alleged efforts by China to target US citizens and residents of Uighur heritage.
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