The Commerce Department announced on Friday that it will impose sanctions on a number of Chinese companies it alleges to have ties with the human rights abuses against a Muslim minority group in the northwestern part of the country.
In statements released through the department’s website, officials said they were punishing the companies for “activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”
“These nine parties are complicit in human rights violations and abuses committed in China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labor and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region,” read part of the first statement.
Since 2017, more than 2 million Uighur Muslims have been moved into detention camps in Xinjiang province of China. There, Uighurs are allegedly put through rigorous “deradicalization” programs and are mocked and tortured by Chinese guards.
Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the GOP ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, backed the decision, telling the Washington Examiner that the companies on the list were “violating the rights of ethnic minorities.”
“I stand firmly in support of President Trump’s decision to place these Chinese Communist Party-controlled entities on the Export Control Entity List,” McCaul told the Washington Examiner.
“These entities are violating the rights of ethnic minorities, in many cases profiting off of their suffering as well as using U.S. technology to empower the CCP military.
“We must do everything we can to penalize them. The world can no longer turn a blind eye to the continued human rights violations perpetrated by the CCP and the companies that support them.”
Another statement released by the department earlier in the day said that 24 Chinese companies would have sanctions imposed on them because there is a fear the businesses could be used to procure “items for military end-use in China.”
“The new additions to the Entity List demonstrate our commitment to preventing the use of U.S. commodities and technologies in activities that undermine our interests,” Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said in a statement.
The moves come amid heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing as uncertainty and fear surrounding the coronavirus has clouded communications between the two.
Source: Washington Examiner
