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Lawmakers are urging Washington to punish the Chinese authorities for possible crimes against humanity the same week that Beijing legalized its policy of mass detention of Uyghur Muslims.
In an annual report released on Wednesday, the bipartisan Congressional Executive Committee on China (CCCB) said Beijing's longstanding crackdown on the Uighur Muslim minority was deteriorating.
Nearly one million Uighurs in the western border region of Xinjiang may have been forced to settle in a vast network of detention camps in what the commission describes as "the biggest incarceration of a population of ethnic minorities since the Second World War ".
Last week, China had denied the large-scale detention of minorities and dismissed foreign critics as hyperbole. But on Tuesday, Beijing revised a law aimed at formalizing the "re-education" of people perceived by the state as religious extremists.
This decision comes as Washington is stepping up protest maneuvers over alleged abuses in Xinjiang. Last week, Vice President Mike Pence accused China of wanting to "eradicate the Muslim religion," and called for the restoration of relations between America and China.
On Friday, Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Christopher H. Smith, Co-Chairs of the China Commission, intend to introduce a bill condemning the Chinese crackdown in Xinjiang and urging the government to impose financial penalties.
As the United States approaches the issue of accountability for Xinjiang, here is what to know about the repression exerted by China on its Muslim minority.
Who are the Uighurs?
On the border of Central Asia, the Xinjiang Autonomous Region is home to the Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group that represents about 40 percent of the 19 million people in the border region. Beijing has been imposing more and more discriminatory regulations on the group since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012. Over the years, Uyghurs have been subjected to heightened scrutiny and increased restrictions, including the imposition of restrictions. ban on veiling in public, enforcement of family planning laws and passport orders.
A Uighur man drinks tea at a local tea shop in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China, on July 6, 2017.
Anadolu Agency / Getty Images
What's going on with the camps?
In August, a US committee called Xinjiang a "no-go zone," saying China had placed more than one million Uighurs in internment camps and submitted two million more to "re-education".
According to information of former detainees, inside these centers, the Uyghurs are obliged to pledge allegiance to Xi, to give up their religion, to learn Mandarin and to sing songs for the communist party, the Washington To post reports. According to an open letter from dissidents, torture and deaths are not uncommon.
In a major pivot this week, the Xinjiang government enacted the law as an "education and transformation organization" that will stifle Islamic extremism, according to the government. To post. The revised law marks the first time that China tries to justify the existence of extrajudicial detention centers.
What action is the United States trying to take?
Rubio and Smith's bill recommends the use of the Magnitsky law "to impose financial sanctions or deny US entry visas" to officials involved in the abuses committed by the Uyghurs.
The legislation is not binding, but would give the Trump administration 120 days to respond to a ruling on possible sanctions against the perpetrators of human rights violations. Senators discussed the Magnitsky law earlier this week in the case of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who is presumed dead after disappearing from his consulate in Turkey.
In China, the most likely target would be Chen Quanguo, according to the financial report Time. Chen is the secretary of the Xinjiang Communist Party and has overseen mass detentions.
In response to the threat of embargo, Chinese state media has accused Western countries of "annoying as an acute housewife," according to the daily. To post.
In addition to pressuring, the legislator said he would continue to highlight the situation in Xinjiang by: appoint Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti jailed for the Nobel Peace Prize.
"It is essential that our foreign policy give priority to the promotion of universal human rights and the protection of fundamental human dignity, principles that the Chinese Communist Party is actively trying to redefine," Rubio and Smith urged. when opening the Congress report.
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