The US on Friday unveiled a raft of new rights-abuse sanctions against senior officials and entities in eight countries, with targets ranging from a Chinese firm specializing in facial recognition technology to a giant cartoon studio in North Korea.
Timed for International Human Rights Day and supported in part by Canada and the UK, the sanctions took aim at officials accused of abetting the crackdown on anti-coup protestors in Myanmar, the oppression of Muslim Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang region and political violence in Bangladesh under the guise of a war on drugs.
“Our actions today, particularly those in partnership with the United Kingdom and Canada, send a message that democracies around the world will act against those who abuse the power of the state to inflict suffering and repression,” the US Department of the Treasury said.
It said that China’s artificial intelligence company SenseTime Group Inc (商湯科技), and two ethnic Uighur political leaders in Xinjiang, Shohrat Zakir and Erken Tuniyaz, took part in sweeping oppression of Uighurs.
Zakir was chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China from at least 2018 to this year, and Tuniyaz is the current acting chairman.
Zakir has defended the prison camps as “education centers” that teach people Mandarin and “the true meaning of religion.”
International rights organizations have called them a central tool in the Chinese government’s “genocidal” policies toward Uighurs.
The treasury department said that SenseTime’s facial recognition programs were designed in part to be used in Xinjiang against Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities, more than 1 million of whom have been incarcerated in prison camps.
The treasury department also announced the first new US sanctions to target North Korea since US President Joe Biden took office, a move that comes after months of attempting to engage Pyongyang in talks on its nuclear program.
It accused North Korea’s government-run animation firm, SEK Studio, and companies and individuals related to it, of exploiting North Korean workers to earn much-needed foreign exchange and avoid sanctions on the country.
SEK Studio has an international reputation and has contributed work to big-budget animated features including Disney’s Pocahontas and The Lion King.
Also hit with sanctions was North Korean Minister of People’s Armed Forces Ri Yong-gil.
The sanctions and blacklisting can prevent individuals from obtaining visas to the US, block assets under US jurisdiction, and block the targets from doing business with US individuals or entities, effectively locking them out of the US banking system.
In additional actions, the treasury department added four Burmese state and regional chief ministers to its sanctions blacklist, accusing them of participating in “brutal crackdowns” against Burmese people.
A Bangladesh internal security unit, the Rapid Action Battalion, which is accused of involvement in hundreds of disappearances and nearly 600 extrajudicial killings since 2018, and six current or former officials of the battalion were also included.
In a parallel move, the US Department of State announced Friday the blacklisting of 12 officials from China, Uganda, Belarus, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Mexico “for their involvement in gross violations of human rights.”
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