US urged to use sanctions and block surveillance tech sales to squeeze China over Xinjiang
Range of measures needed to counter crackdown in which up to 1 million ethnic Uygurs and other Muslims are thought to be detained, congressional committee hears
US lawmakers should adopt a multi-pronged approach to pressure the Chinese government about its aggressive crackdown on Uygurs in the country’s far west, researchers and an advocacy group have told a congressional committee.
Speaking at a US House of Representatives hearing this week, witnesses from academia and human rights advocacy said the Trump administration should pursue economic sanctions against Chinese officials, expose American companies providing Chinese authorities with surveillance technology and dispatch a congressional fact-finding mission to the region, among other measures.
In response, China’s foreign ministry accused the US of “interfering with China's internal affairs” and urged it to “stop stirring up” the issue.
The appeals came amid reports that between several hundred thousand and 1 million ethnic Uygurs and other Muslims are being detained in extrajudicial internment camps and subjected to enforced political re-education in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
Chinese officials have denied the existence of arbitrary detention and enforced political re-education, instead saying that some citizens are being sent to vocational centres for minor criminal misdemeanours, and that all counterterrorism measures have been carried out in accordance with the law.
“What’s happening there should be confined to science fiction, but unfortunately it’s not,” Representative Ted Yoho, a Republican from Florida, said at the beginning of Wednesday’s hearing, convened by the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific.