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WASHINGTON: The United States announced on Monday (September 14) that it would block a range of Chinese products made through “forced labor” in the Xinjiang region, including from a “vocational” center that it called a “concentration camp” for Uighur minorities. .
“The Chinese government is involved in systematic abuses against the Uighur people” and other minorities, said Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection agency.
“Forced labor is a heinous abuse of human rights,” he said.
Items include cotton, clothing, hair products and electronics from five specific manufacturers in Xinjiang and neighboring Anhui.
It also included all products linked to the Lop County Vocational Skills Education and Training Center No. 4 in Xinjiang, which Acting Under Secretary for Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli said was a forced labor center.
“This is not a vocational center, it is a concentration camp, a place where religious and ethnic minorities are abused and forced to work in atrocious conditions, without recourse or freedom,” Cuccinelli told reporters.
“This is modern slavery.”
The announced actions consisted of “withholding release orders” or WROs, which empower CBP to seize products from blacklisted companies and organizations.
The US government is increasingly using such orders to pressure Beijing to detain more than a million members of the Uighur minority, mostly Muslim, in Xinjiang for apparent re-education.
CALLING ATTENTION TO ABUSES
In July, the customs agency placed WRO blocks on hair products, used for wigs and extensions, from various companies operating in Xinjiang, and in August it did the same for garments made and sold by Hero Vast Group.
“The Chinese government needs to close its concentration camps,” Cuccinelli said.
The move came as human rights groups and members of the United States Congress pressure the administration of President Donald Trump to take more decisive action on the alleged Chinese crackdown on Muslims in the vast west of the country.
In July, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on a major paramilitary group, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, charging it with abuses against Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim groups.
He also hit several officials with sanctions, including Chen Quanguo, the head of the Chinese Communist Party for the Xinjiang region and the architect of Beijing’s hard-line policies against restless minorities.
“The Trump Administration has led the world in drawing attention to the egregious human rights abuses of the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang, and we have taken steps to support our rhetoric,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.
CBP officials said they are currently studying a measure to place a block on all Xinjiang cotton and tomatoes.
In August, the Investors Alliance for Human Rights called for a ban on all cotton products linked to Xinjiang, which supplies most of China’s cotton.
