US stokes China fury on Uighurs

China has slammed the US for passing legislation that would apply sanctions over the crackdown against its Uighur minority.

A screengrab of a video showing blindfolded and shackled Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang Province. Picture: YouTube

China has slammed the US for passing legislation that would apply sanctions against senior Chinese officials over the crackdown in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

The Uighur Act “wantonly smears China’s efforts to eliminate extremism and combat ­terrorism (and) viciously attacks the Chinese government’s policy of governing Xinjiang”, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.

The legislation adds to tensions between the two superpowers just as they are locked in negotiations to finalise a “phase one” deal to resolve their protracted trade war.

Washington had already ­angered Beijing when Donald Trump signed legislation supporting pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, prompting China earlier this week to ­impose sanctions on US-based NGOs and suspend future visits by US warships to the semi-autonomous territory.

The bill condemns Beijing’s “gross human rights violations” linked to the crackdown in Xinjiang, where about one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities are believed to be held in re-education camps.

The measure, which passed by the House of Representatives 407-1, is a stronger version of the bill that cleared the Senate in September.

The latest measure condemns the arbitrary mass detention of Uighurs and calls for closure of the re-education camps where, according to rights groups, they have been held and abused.

The bill notably urges Mr Trump to slap sanctions on ­Chinese officials behind the ­Uighur policy, including Chen Quanguo, the Communist Party chief for Xinjiang.

“Today the human dignity and human rights of the Uighur community are under threat from Beijing’s barbarous actions, which are an outrage to the collective conscience of the world,” house Speaker Nancy Pelosi told her colleagues before the vote.

Congress “is taking a critical step to counter Beijing’s horrific human rights abuses against ­Uighurs. America is watching.”

Ms Pelosi lashed out at ­Chinese authorities for orchestrating a crackdown that includes pervasive mass state surveillance, solitary confinement, beatings, forced sterilisation “and other forms of torture”.

Beijing called on the US to prevent the bill from becoming law and warned — without elaborating — that it would respond “according to the development of the situation”.

The Chinese state-owned tabloid The Global Times quoted experts as saying Beijing would take “strong countermeasures” including releasing an “unreliable entity list” that could sanction and restrict some US entities in the country and impose sanctions on US officials.

After initially denying the camps’ existence, Beijing cast the facilities as “vocational education centres” where “students” learn Mandarin and job skills in an effort to steer them away from religious extremism, terrorism and separatism.

AFP