Uyghur Human Rights Project Calls for More Sanctions, Broader Import Ban Approach for Xinjiang
Uyghur Human Rights Project Board Chair Nury Turkel told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that his nonprofit wants swift passage of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which would create a rebuttable presumption that goods from China's Xinjiang province were made with forced labor. "The 11 current Withhold-release orders (WROs) are a wholly inadequate response to the gravity of the crimes, the harm to American workers whose wages are undercut by forced-labor competition, and the unwitting complicity of American consumers who buy face masks, hair weaves, cotton apparel, and solar panels produced by the forced labor of Muslim Uyghurs," he said in his prepared testimony.
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He said UHRP supports additional human-rights sanctions against China that are part of the Senate's Strategic Competition Act (SB-1169). Also, he said that there's been evasion of sanctions aimed at preventing exports of technology that enables mass surveillance of minority populations in China. "We are urging the [Department of Justice] to investigate the role of U.S. technology firms in ongoing genocide, as some of the companies subject to the 'Entity List' export ban have reportedly changed their names to evade the sanctions, and US firms have continued to work with them," he testified. He also said Congress should hold hearings to examine complicity of Silicon Valley and American universities in this surveillance state.
He also said, "The Department of Commerce should prohibit American sales to all Xinjiang entities, in addition to the 48 Chinese companies and government departments currently on the 'Entity List' for helping to build China's surveillance state and forced-labor scheme for Uyghurs." The nonprofit also recommends revising and reissuing the Supply Chain Business Advisory on Forced Labor and other Human Rights Abuses in Xinjiang, an interagency publication from 2020, with a new focus on solar cells and technology companies.