A bipartisan group of US lawmakers introduced legislation Wednesday seeking to punish China over its “human rights abuses” of the majority-Muslim Uighur population in the country’s west, a move that drew immediate anger from Beijing.
A bipartisan group of US lawmakers introduced legislation Wednesday seeking to punish China over its “human rights abuses” of the majority-Muslim Uighur population in the country’s west, a move that drew immediate anger from Beijing.
Legislation introduced in both the Senate and House of Representatives seeks to toughen US President Donald Trump’s administration’s response to what the lawmakers say are gross violations of human rights in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
The bill urges US authorities to impose targeted sanctions on members of China’s government, the ruling Communist Party and state security apparatus, as well Xinjiang Party Secretary Chen Quanguo and other officials “credibly alleged to be responsible for human rights abuses in Xinjiang and elsewhere.”
China’s Uighurs have faced unprecedented surveillance in recent years, and the United Nations has determined that up to one million Uighurs have been rounded up in detention camps.
Washington must hold government and Communist Party officials “responsible for gross violations of human rights and possible crimes against humanity, including the internment in ‘political reeducation’ camps of as many as a million Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim minorities,” Senator Marco Rubio, a chief sponsor, said in a statement.
