Washington [US], March 16 (ANI): Even though the US sanctions on China for numerous human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims are hurting the nation but more action needs to be taken by the Biden administration to further enhance the pressure on Beijing’s increasing crackdown on ethnic minorities.
Also, the US and other democracies must take on the question of whether to attend the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.
According to an opinion piece by Washington Post, China‘s foreign ministry announced that ‘many companies and residents in Xinjiang suffered heavy losses as a result of a US ban on imports of cotton.
Beijing blamed the measure on Adrian Zenz, a German researcher who has exposed many of the crimes committed against the Uyghurs, including the forced labour of hundreds of thousands compelled to pick cotton by hand.
According to reports in the state media, a number of companies in Xinjiang are suing Zenz for damages in a local court. That’s one more example of how China now seeks to silence its critics abroad, as well as at home.
“It is the first admission that they really are suffering major economic losses… Suing an academic — there is an element of desperation in there,” he said.
According to The Post, the response of the United States and other democracies has not been nearly equal to the immense scale of the crimes against the Uyghurs.
In a report by a US-based think tank called New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, experts argue that hat President Xi Jinping “set in motion . . . [a] comprehensive state policy and practice” with “the intent to destroy the Uyghurs as a group.”
The report also found that China was guilty of all five acts which classify as genocide under the Genocide Convention: killing Uyghurs; causing them serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about their physical destruction; imposing measures to prevent births and forcibly transferring their children to the custody of others.
Meanwhile, Zenz has called for Congress to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which would block all imports from forced labour in Xinjiang.
China has been rebuked globally for cracking down on Uyghur Muslims by sending them to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious activities and sending members of the community to undergo some form of forcible re-education or indoctrination.
Beijing, on the other hand, has vehemently denied that it is engaged in human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang while reports from journalists, NGOs and former detainees have surfaced, highlighting the Chinese Communist Party’s brutal crackdown on the ethnic community. (ANI)
