CNA Staff, May 15, 2020 / 11:30 am
The Senate approved a bill on Thursday to sanction Chinese leaders complicit in the persecution of Uyghur Muslims.
The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, authored by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and co-sponsored by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), passed the Senate by unanimous consent on Thursday; would authorize the identification and sanctioning of Chinese officials identified as complicit in human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in China.
"The Chinese Government and Communist Party's systematic, ongoing efforts to wipe out the ethnic and cultural identities of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang is horrific and will be a stain on humanity should we refuse to act," Rubio stated.
More than a million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and members of other Muslim minority groups have been detained by Chinese authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The years-long crackdown in the region by the Chinese authorities has been implemented supposedly as an anti-terrorism, anti-extremism measure.