US lawmakers push for sanctions in China
Activists have accused China of destroying mosques in Xinjiang and of sentencing Uyghurs caught with social media accounts on their phone to 15 years in “re-education centres”
WASHINGTON: A bipartisan group of lawmakers are pushing the administration of US President Donald Trump to sanction authorities in China over human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
The group of 24 Senators and 19 Representatives sent a letter urging Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to impose Global Magnitsky Act sanctions against communist party authorities in China for their “complicity in gross human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang”, according to a press release.
The bipartisan effort was led by Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Bob Menendenz (D-NJ) and US Representatives James P. McGovern (D-MA) and Chris Smith (R-NJ).
The group urged the Commerce Department to strengthen export controls and ensure that US companies are not assisting the Chinese Government in creating the vast civilian surveillance or bigdata predictive policing systems used in Xinjiang.
The letter states, “We write today regarding the ongoing mass internment and surveillance of ethnic Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
“Congress has consistently urged the Administration to respond strongly and decisively, including by swiftly imposing sanctions against those Chinese government and Communist Party officials and entities that are complicit in or directing the ongoing human rights abuses in Xinjiang.”
For its part, officials of the Trump administration have previously called on China to end the detention of the muslim minorities in Xinjiang.
In March, Secretary Pompeo called for the immediate release of all Muslim detainees.
In a statement, Pompeo said, “China has detained more than one million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities in internment camps in Xinjiang since April 2017.
The US stands with them and their family members. China must release all those arbitrarily detained and end its repression.”
Speaking to reporters, Sam Brownback, US Ambassador-atLarge for International Religious Freedom, said, “China’s at war with faith, but it is a war they will not win.
The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t seem to trust its own people to allow them to choose their own path for their souls, and there’s over a billion people at stake here.
“No longer can Muslims name their children Mohammed; no longer can Tibetan Buddhists choose and venerate their own religious leaders as they have for over a thousand years; churches are being destroyed,” he said.
Narrating a recent meeting between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and an Uyghur mother of triplets, Brownback stated, “She was separated from her children and subjected to horrific conditions and abuses in an internment camp, and one of her children died while she was in Chinese Government custody.
Following one of her detentions, she has now 26 family members that have been detained. Four have already died.
He joined Secretary Pompeo in demanding the closure of the facilities and the release of Uighur detainees. China, he said, “must end these counterproductive policies, release all arbitrarily detained, and end its repression that is taking place.” The protesters have also called for the mass internment of religious minorities in China to end.