Senate Committee Advances Bipartisan Bill to Condemn China's Muslim Crackdown

(Updated 5/22/2019): The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act (S. 178), sponsored by Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ). The action sets up a potential floor vote in the near future.

Countable's original post appears below.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in both chambers of Congress is looking to ramp up the U.S. diplomatic response to the Chinese government’s mass detainment of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in “political reeducation” camps in the northwestern Xinjiang region.

Human rights experts say that between 800,000 to 2 million Muslims have been detained indefinitely in reeducation camps since April 2017 because the Chinese Communist Party views them as a potential extremist or separatist threat. Detainees are interned without due process in the camps, where they are subjected to communist propaganda, forced to renounce Islam, and in some cases are beaten and tortured.

And the crackdown extends beyond the reeducation camps as well, with political and cultural indoctrination occurring in schools and authorities using compulsory collection of biometric data (like DNA & voice samples), artificial intelligence, big data, and movement restrictions to control the population.

A Human Rights Watch report notes that the “human rights violations in Xinjiang today are of a scope and scale not seen in China since the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution”, and explains the motivation behind it:

“Authorities have sought to justify harsh treatment in the name of maintaining stability and security in Xinjiang, and to “strike at” those deemed terrorists and extremists in a “precise” and “in-depth” manner. Xinjiang officials claim the root of these problems is the “problematic ideas” of Turkic Muslims. These ideas include what authorities describe as extreme religious dogmas, but also any non-Han Chinese sense of identity, be it Islamic, Turkic, Uyghur, or Kazakh. Authorities insist that such beliefs and affinities must be “corrected” or “eradicated.” 

In response, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Congress have offered bills to step up a diplomatic response to China’s crackdown in Xinjiang.

Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) introduced the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act (S. 178), which would require federal agencies to gather information and produce reports about the persecution, and consider imposing sanctions on relevant persons or entities under the Magnitsky Act and the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act. The bill would also encourage the U.S. to use diplomatic tools to condemn China’s behavior and demand closure of the reeducation camps.

On the other side of the Capitol, Reps. Brad Sherman (D-CA) and Ted Yoho (R-FL) offered the UIGHUR Act (H.R. 1025), which contains provisions similar to those described in the Senate bill and would also block the export of technology that could be used to further surveillance or detention activities in Xinjiang.

— Eric Revell

(Photo Credit: 牙生 via Wikimedia From an article titled "用情感敲开心灵大门 用说理舒缓群众情绪", published by the wechat MP platform account "Xinjiang Juridical Administration", via baidu baijiahao platform archive / Fair Use)