WASHINGTON: The US Commerce Department announced Monday it is blacklisting28 Chinese entities that it says are implicated in rights violations andabuses targeting Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in the Xinjiangregion.
Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced the move, which bars the namedentities from purchasing US products, saying the United States “cannot andwill not tolerate the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities within China.”
According to an update to the US Federal Register set to be publishedWednesday, the blacklisted firms included video surveillance companyHikvision, as well as artificial intelligence companies Megvii Technologyand SenseTime.
The ban comes amid heightened tensions between the US and China,particularly over trade policy and Beijing´s actions in the westernXinjiang region.
The world´s two biggest economies are in the midst of a trade war that´sseen them impose tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in bilateraltrade.
On Monday, the White House announced that talks between the two countrieswere set to resume on Thursday, with Beijing´s top trade envoy Liu He dueto meet US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury SecretarySteven Mnuchin.
The US has meanwhile stepped up its rhetoric against Beijing over itspolicies in the western Xinjiang region.
Right groups say China has detained around one million Uighurs and otherMuslims in re-education camps in the region, actions that Washington hassaid are reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
During last month´s United Nations General Assembly, the State Departmentorganized an event to highlight the plight of the Uighurs, with the US´ssecond-highest diplomat John Sullivan decrying “China´s horrific campaignof repression.”
“In Xinjiang, the Chinese government prevents Muslims from praying andreading the Quran, and it has destroyed or defaced a great number ofmosques,” Sullivan said.
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“This is a systematic campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to stop itsown citizens from exercising their unalienable right to religious freedom.”
China had until recently denied the existence of re-education camps, butnow claims they are “vocational training schools” necessary to controlterrorism, while decrying interference in its “internal affairs.”
Huawei targeted
The 28 entities blacklisted include 18 public security bureaus in Xinjiang,one police college and eight businesses.
“These entities have been implicated in human rights violations and abusesin the implementation of China´s campaign of repression, mass arbitrarydetention, and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, Kazakhs andother members of Muslim minority groups,” the Federal Register update said.
The blacklisting of the Chinese companies follows Washington´s earlier moveto stop technology giant Huawei and other Chinese firms from obtaininggovernment contracts.
Hikvision was also included in that ban, which will preclude any US federalagency from purchasing telecom or technology equipment from the firms andcomes amid concern that Huawei is linked to Chinese intelligence.
The US fears that systems built by Huawei could be used by Beijing forespionage via secret “backdoors” built into telecom networking equipment.-APP/AFP
