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Pelosi: The vote is a signal to Beijing that Congress will not allow the sacrifice of human rights (Getty)
The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill on Tuesday that bans the importation of most goods produced in Xinjiang, the Chinese province in which Washington says Beijing is forcing members of the Uighur Muslim minority. to perform “slave labor.”
In a rare near consensus in the House of Representatives, deeply divided between a Democratic majority and a Republican minority, 406 MPs supported the bill, while only three MPs voted against it. The text has yet to be approved in the Senate before President Donald Trump approves it to take effect.
The Uighurs are Turkish-speaking Muslims who make up the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, the vast and autonomous region of northwest China.
The United States, other Western countries and several international organizations accuse the Chinese authorities of committing widespread violations of the rights of Uighurs and detaining more than a million Muslims in Xinjiang in concentration camps. However, Beijing says that this number is greatly exaggerated and that these sites are not detention centers but vocational training centers aimed at helping residents find work and get away from religious extremism.
The bill would ban all imports from Xinjiang, the region where a minority of Uighurs reside and is subject to crackdown by authorities.
The bill would ban all imports from Xinjiang, except those in which there is “clear and convincing evidence” to US Customs that they are not the result of forced labor.
According to a report attached to the bill when the text was first presented to Congress in March, many of the products that entered the US market were already the product of forced labor in Xinjiang, including fabrics, shoes, cell phones, computers and tea. .
The report listed the companies accused of profiting from these commodities, including “Adidas,” “Nike,” “Calvin Klein,” “Hend M,” and “Coca-Cola.”
During the voting session on the bill, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, said that the broad support of both parties in Congress for this text, and other text on “the forced labor of Uighurs”, sends “a strong signal to Beijing and the world that the US Congress … will not allow the sacrifice of rights.” Being human on behalf of business interests. “
The administration of President Donald Trump announced on September 14 that it would ban the importation of a number of goods produced in Xinjiang, accusing Beijing of imposing “forced labor” on Uighurs.
On that day, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement that “this is a clear message” to the Chinese authorities that “the time has come to end state-supervised forced labor and respect the human rights of all people “.
(Brush from France)
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