WASHINGTON: The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on dozens of people and entities in China, Myanmar, while blacklisting a Chinese artificial intelligence company for human rights abuses marking International Human Rights Day.
This came as the Myanmar military is committing human rights abuses in the country after it ousted the democratically elected government in February.
The financial and visa sanctions came on the final day of President Joe Biden’s virtual Summit for Democracy, where he unveiled policies to bolster democracy against threats around the world and appealed for solidarity among some 100 participants, Radio Free Asia reported.
“On International Human Rights Day, Treasury is using its tools to expose and hold accountable perpetrators of serious human rights abuse,” Wally Adeyemo, United States Deputy Secretary of the Treasury said in a statement. Meanwhile, the US has also imposed sanctions on entities associated with rights abuses in China, North Korea and Bangladesh.
The sanctions on China also include US visa ban on the current and previous chairmen of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), where thousands of Uyghur are being held in detention camps by the Chinese Communist Party as a part of its crackdown on the minority community, Radio Free Asia reported. These sanctions came a day after a tribunal in London found that Chinese policies in the region constituted genocide.
After a series of hearings that lasted several months, a London based independent tribunal has ruled that China committed ‘genocide’ against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang province.
The Uyghur Tribunal declared the verdict after a panel of Britain-based lawyers and rights experts examined human rights violations in the Xinjiang region. Hearings were held in June, September, and November 2021, during which the Tribunal’s expert panel reviewed hundreds of witness statements and heard live evidence from more than 30 witnesses about their experiences of China’s oppressive policies, as well as from expert witnesses.
Earlier this year, the US became the first country in the world to declare the Chinese actions in Xinjiang as “genocide”.
In February, both the Canadian and Dutch parliaments adopted motions recognizing the Uyghur crisis as genocide. (ANI)
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