China’s Communist Party removes top Xinjiang official sanctioned by US
The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CPC), headed by President Xi Jinping, has abruptly replaced its chief in the volatile Xinjiang province, Chen Quanguo, who was sanctioned by the US over alleged human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in the region.
Chen no longer serves as Secretary of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regional Committee of the CPC, state-run news agency reported on Saturday. Ma Xingrui, who was the governor of Guangdong province, has been appointed as new party chief for Xinjiang. The CPC Central Committee has decided to give Chen another appointment, the news agency said.
Chen has been accused by the US, the UK and the European Union of widespread human rights abuses against Uyghurs, but he is tipped for a promotion, Hong Kong-based newspaper reported on the development.
Last year, the US government had slapped sanctions against Chen and several other Chinese officials incharge of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, stating they were “believed to be responsible for, or complicit in the unjust detention or abuse of Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs and members of other minority groups in Xinjiang”.
The three Chinese officials banned by the US were Chen Quanguo, CCP Party Secretary of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Zhu Hailun, the then Party Secretary of the Xinjiang Political and Legal Committee and Wang Mingshan, Party Secretary of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau. They were sanctioned by the former US government led by President Donald Trump - which pursued a tough policy on China; parts of which have been carried forward by his predecessor Joe Biden. In a tit-for-tat move, China had imposed sanctions against US Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), the then US Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Samuel Brownback, US Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Congressman Chris Smit.
The US-China ties are going through a tense phase as the Biden administration has already announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics which is to be held in February next year. Escalating matters further, Biden on Thursday signed the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act which prohibits American businesses from importing goods from Xinjiang unless they can be proven not to have been made by forced labour. China has condemned the new US law, saying it violated international laws and interfered in its internal affairs.
China is battling allegations of human rights violations against Uyghur Muslims in the last few years from the West. The allegations include incarceration of thousands of Uyghurs in mass detention camps, forced labour in manufacturing units of the resource-rich Xinjiang, forced abortions, and mass indoctrination and other such crimes.
Beijing says its security crackdown in Xinjiang was aimed at the separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which is affiliated to the Al-Qaida faction operating in Xinjiang. The labour camps have been called regular job training.
“The so-called allegations of ‘forced labour’ and ‘genocide’ in Xinjiang are nothing but vicious lies concocted by anti-China forces,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told.