FACTS
A recent in depth investigation by Dr. Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and a leading China expert, reported atrocious and widespread human rights abuses by the Chinese government against the Uighur Muslim population. Population-control measures include forced abortion, IUDs, and sterilization, affecting hundreds of thousands of women and families. Reports of Uighur organ harvesting have also surfaced, an accusation China denies. Government guidances from 2018 and 2019 directed Chinese officials and police to search homes unwarranted, looking for children and detaining in “reeducation camps” or prisons those who have failed to comply with population control mandates. There are said to be between one and three million people being held in the camps. Birth rates among the Uighur people were reported to have dropped by 60% in only 3 years.
The appalling persecution of the Uighur Muslims in China cannot continue.#PMQs pic.twitter.com/Pidxxiz7xj
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) July 22, 2020
RESPONSE
There has been widespread criticism over the Chinese government’s human rights abuses from both sides of the aisle.
“We call on the Chinese Communist Party to immediately end these horrific practices.”
Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State
An interview with conservative podcast Problematic Women referenced a video of blindfolded Uighur people being loaded onto trains and compared the situation to that of Jews during the Holocaust. President Trump has recently issued multiple rounds of sanctions against Chinese officials and companies involved in the oppression of the Uighur Muslim minority. However, Olivia Enos, a senior policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, has called his response slow and timid.
Professor James Leibold, a specialist in Chinese ethnic policy at La Trobe University in Melbourne, noted that the Chinese government’s human rights abuse “links back to China’s long history of dabbling in eugenics.”
Criticism has been unleashed towards the likes of Apple and NBA over their business dealings with China:
“Concentration camps, for instance, help make those Nike uniforms that the NBA wears. They should pledge right now – Nike, the NBA, and all these American corporations – that they will not use forced slave labor.”
Josh Hawley, Missouri State Senator
Similarly, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) headed a series of letters to the CEOs of 30 different companies calling for the same.
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