China said on Monday it will impose sanctions on three US lawmakers and an ambassador in response to similar actions taken by the United States last week against Chinese officials for alleged human rights abuses against Muslims in the Xinjiang region.
US Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, Representative Chris Smith and Ambassador for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback were attacked, as was the Congressional Executive Commission on China. All four men have criticized the ruling Communist Party’s policies towards minority groups and people of faith.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said the US actions had “seriously damaged relations between China and the United States” and that China was determined to defend its national sovereignty against what it considers to be interference in its internal affairs. .
“China will respond more according to the development of the situation,” Hua said.
She did not explain the sanctions beyond saying that they would correspond to the Americans. The United States has banned any property transaction between Americans and four senior Chinese officials, and prohibited three of the officials from entering the United States.
There was no indication that any of the four sanctioned Americans had plans to travel to China.
The travel bans appear to be direct retaliation for the United States’ imposition of sanctions on four Chinese officials, including Chen Quanguo, who heads the northwest region of Xinjiang, where more than 1 million members of Muslim minority groups have been jailed. in what Beijing calls dismissal. Radicalization and recycling centers.
China’s officially atheistic communist government initially denied the existence of internment camps, but now says they are vocational training facilities aimed at countering Muslim radicalism and separatist tendencies. Critics have compared the camps to the prisons to which inmates are sentenced with little due process and where they are forced to denounce their religion, language and culture and swear allegiance to the Communist Party and its leader, President Xi Jinping.
An Associated Press investigation also uncovered allegations that women from Xinjiang’s predominantly native Uighur ethnic group were forced to use contraception or undergo involuntary sterilization.
Ties between China and the United States have steadily deteriorated due to the coronavirus crisis, human rights, Beijing’s policy towards Hong Kong, and trade. The Trump government also imposed visa bans on Chinese officials held responsible for banning foreigners’ access to Tibet, along with those believed to be imposing a civil rights crackdown in Hong Kong.
Despite such moves, former national security adviser John Bolton claimed in a new book that Trump told Xi that he was right to build detention camps in Xinjiang.
Additional visa restrictions are being imposed on other Communist Party officials believed to be responsible or complicit in the detention or abuse of Uighurs, Kazakhs and members of other minority groups.
In addition to Chen, the party secretary of the Xinjiang party and a member of the national political bureau, the other sanctioned officials were Zhu Hailun, party secretary of the Xinjiang Political and Legal Committee; Wang Mingshan, Party Secretary of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau; and Huo Liujun, a former senior official in the region’s police force.
They and their immediate family are prohibited from entering the United States.
China has tried to crush any hint of separatist tendencies among the Uighurs, which critics say amounts to a campaign of cultural genocide. The Uighurs are mostly Muslim, and their Turkish language, religion and Central Asian culture set them apart from the majority of Han Chinese.
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While China says it is bringing prosperity and development to the vast resource-rich region, many of Xinjiang’s native ethnic groups say they are denied economic options in favor of migrants from other parts of China.
Last December, Xinjiang authorities announced that the camps had closed and that all detainees had “graduated”, a claim difficult to independently substantiate given the strict vigilance and reporting restrictions in the region. Some Uyghurs and Kazakhs told AP that their relatives were released, but many others say that their loved ones remain in detention, were sentenced to prison, or transferred to forced labor in factories.
In October 2019, the United States imposed visa restrictions on Chinese officials “believed to be responsible or complicit” in the detention of Muslims in Xinjiang. It also blacklisted more than two dozen Chinese companies and agencies linked to abuses in the region, including surveillance technology makers and the Xinjiang public security bureau, preventing them from buying American products.
