Less than a month into the new session, the U.S. Congress is once again focusing on the human rights issues facing Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. A bipartisan group of senators reintroduced a bill Wednesday (Jan. 27) that would ban all products produced by Uyghurs in Xinjiang from entering the United States as a result of forced labor.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is co-sponsored by Republican Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Democratic Senator Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR).
Senators Rubio and Merkley, co-chairs and members of the Congressional and Executive Commission on China (CECC), introduced a bill of the same name in March 2020, but it failed to pass before the end of the previous Congress.
At the beginning of the new Congress, the two senators are once again leading a collaborative effort to co-sponsor the bill. The bill has now been cosponsored by 27 cross-party lawmakers, garnering a highly affirmative bipartisan consensus in Congress.
“There is no reason to turn a blind eye to the serious human rights abuses, including genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, committed by the Chinese Communist Party against Uighurs and other minority Muslims. Instead, we must do everything in our power to stop them,” Rubio said in a statement Wednesday.
Rubio also mentioned that the goal of the bill is to prevent products made from forced Uighur labor from entering the U.S. supply chain and prevent U.S. companies from profiting from them.
Merkley also said in the statement that the Chinese government has been committing genocide in Xinjiang for years in one post, imposing practices such as torture, imprisonment for forced labor and forcing Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities to give up their original religion, cultural practices and other practices, which cannot be ignored.
“The fact that some of the products they are forced to produce end up on the shelves of American stores is disturbing and unacceptable,” Merkley said in a written statement, “We must ban the import of these products, ensure that we are not complicit in the genocide, and fully commit to holding these perpetrators of atrocities accountable.”
The Forced Uighur Labor Prevention Act calls for a ban on the importation of all Xinjiang products, including clothing, electronics, etc., sold by U.S. brand-name companies, unless approved by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The core position of the bill contains a “rebuttal presumption,” meaning that the presumption is accepted as true unless proven incorrect, and the presumption presupposes that all products manufactured in Xinjiang are produced using forced labor and are therefore prohibited under the 1930 Tariff Act. Tariff Law is prohibited. Any company seeking to import products made in Xinjiang must demonstrate through a “clear and convincing” examination that its supply chain does not include forced labor.
The State Department is evaluating the Trump administration’s determination that China committed genocide against Uighur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang to ensure the decision is upheld, President Joe Biden‘s nominee for permanent representative to the United Nations told Congress on Wednesday.
“The State Department is evaluating the matter because all the procedures were not followed,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield (D-Calif.) said at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on her nomination confirmation. “They want to make sure that those procedures are followed to ensure that this determination is upheld.”
Last week, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a day before President Biden was to take office that he had made the determination that the Chinese government had committed genocide in Xinjiang “after a careful examination of the available facts. He accused the Chinese Communist Party of committing crimes against humanity against the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities since at least March 2017.
The way Chinese authorities have treated minorities such as the Uighurs in Xinjiang has been widely condemned by Western countries. The U.S. says China has put millions of Uighurs in detention camps. Beijing calls them “vocational skills Education training centers” to eliminate extremism, and denies allegations of abuse.
The U.S. government’s formal genocide designation has significant political and legal implications.
Blinken, who was sworn in as the new secretary of state on Tuesday, has publicly affirmed his Republican predecessor Pompeo’s determination that China committed genocide and crimes against humanity against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, and agreed that China misled the world about the New coronavirus outbreak.
Blinken also hinted that he would continue the hard-line approach the Trump Administration has taken in dealing with China’s challenges and threats.
“President Trump is right to take a tougher stance on China,” Blinken said in response to questioning from lawmakers at the hearing, “and while not all of the lines he’s taken are ones I agree with, his basic principles are right.”
In his first press conference at the State Department on Wednesday, Blinken said he still believes the atrocities against China’s Uighur Muslim minority constitute genocide.
“That hasn’t changed,” he said.
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