Trump Signs Law to Punish China for Persecution of Muslims
By RMN News Service
The U.S. President Donald Trump has signed a new law that will punish the human rights violations of specified ethnic Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang region in China.
Signed Wednesday, June 17, the “Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020” will authorize the U.S. to impose sanctions on certain foreign persons who violate this law.
The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act directs the U.S. administration to impose financial sanctions and visa bans under the Global Magnitsky Act against Chinese government officials responsible for the persecution of Uyghur and other Muslims.
The law also requires federal government agencies to report on human rights abuses in Xinjiang and attempts by Chinese government agents to harass Uyghurs and Chinese nationals in the United States.
Across the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the Uighur people and other Muslim minorities face brutal repression. It includes a pervasive state of mass surveillance, including the arbitrary and non-consensual collection of children’s DNA and the mass incarceration of one to three million innocent people with beatings, solitary confinement, deprivation of food and medical treatment.
These Muslims are subjected to forced sterilizations and other forms of tortures and there are incidents of mass shootings and extrajudicial killings, besides the intimidation and suppression of journalists courageously exposing the truth.
Meanwhile, in its 2020 Annual Report, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has called upon the president to publicly state that U.S. officials would not attend the 2022 Winter Olympic games in Beijing if the Chinese government does not close the concentration camps in Xinjiang.
