On Thursday, the United States (US) slapped sanctions on the Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, a member of China’s Politburo, and three other senior Chinese officials over accusations of human rights abuses against the Uighur Muslims.
Secretary Chen Quanguo is the most senior Chinese official to have ever been blacklisted by the US yet.
This move is expected to further increase tensions between the US and China.
These sanctions fall under the Global Magnitsky Act, a law that permits the US government to target human rights violators around the globe. The Act allows the US government to freeze the human rights violator’s US assets, put them under US travel ban and prohibit Americans from doing any business with them.
According to the United Nations (UN), approximately one million Uighur Muslims have been detained in ‘re-education’ camps in the far western region of Xinjiang, China.
China refers to these camps as vocational skills training centres important to get rid of “extremism”.
Commenting on the sanctions a White House official said, “The United States calls upon the world to stand against the CCP’s acts against its own minority communities in Xinjiang, including mass arbitrary detention, forced labour, religious persecution, and forced birth control and sterilisation”.
While the Director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, Renee Xia, welcomed the sanctions she also stated these actions as being ‘overdue’.
Renee Xia on Twitter wrote, “May the UK, Canada, Australia and the EU take similar actions,” and that she hopes the US ” Admin will implement this law to sanction Chinese officials who commit abuses in Tibet, Hong Kong or on the Mainland.”