US Uighur sanctions target party boss Chen Quanguo

The US has taken its first action to stop ‘horrific’ abuses against China’s Uighurs, imposing sanctions on four senior officials including Chen Quanguo.

Chen Quanguo is the first member of the politburo to be targeted by US sanctions. Picture: AFP

The US has taken its first major action to stop ­“horrific” abuses against China’s Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims, imposing sanctions on four senior Chinese officials.

Three officials will be refused US visas and have any US-based assets frozen, including Chen Quanguo, the Chinese Communist Party chief for the Xinjiang ­region and architect of Beijing’s policies against restive minorities.

Mr Chen is the first member of the politburo to be specifically ­targeted by US sanctions.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US was acting against “horrific and systematic abuses” in the western region including forced labour, mass detention and involuntary population control.

“The United States will not stand idly by as the CCP carries out human rights abuses targeting Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs and members of other minority groups in Xinjiang,” Mr Pompeo said on Friday (AEST).

The other two officials hit with the full sanctions are Wang Mingshan, director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau, and Zhu Hailun, a former senior communist leader in the region.

The Treasury Department sanctions also make it a crime in the US to conduct financial transactions with the three men as well as a former security official Huo Liujun, who was not subjected to the separate visa restrictions.

The department also imposed sanctions on the security bureau as an institution, pointing to its sweeping digital surveillance of Uighurs and other minorities.

Witnesses and human rights groups say China has rounded up more than a million Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang in a vast brainwashing campaign aimed at forcibly homogenising minorities into the country’s Han majority.

Mr Pompeo called the situation “the stain of the century” and has previously drawn parallels with the Holocaust. China counters that it is providing education and vocational training in a bid to reduce the allure of Islamic radicalism, a threat it says it shares with the US.

The Uighur Human Rights Project hailed the sanctions and urged other countries to follow suit. “At last, real consequences have begun. This comes at the 11th hour for Uighurs,” said the group’s executive director, Omer Kanat.

The action comes amid soaring tensions between the US and China on a range of issues from trade to defence to the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Pompeo in recent weeks has also announced visa restrictions on Chinese officials over the treatment of Tibet, and Beijing’s clampdown in Hong Kong — but, in contrast, did not publicly name anyone affected.

Olivia Enos, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation who studies human rights, doubted Beijing would suddenly reverse course in Xinjiang. But she voiced hope that the sanctions would have a broader impact and said it was especially noteworthy that the US targeted Mr Chen, who before Xinjiang made his name through his strong-armed tactics in Tibet.

“My guess is that this will have a ripple effect throughout the Chinese Communist Party. Other would-be bad actors may think twice before engaging in behaviours like you see Chen Quanguo carrying out,” she said.

The visa ban also affects the ­officials’ immediate families, depriving their children of the prestige of jetsetting across the Pacific for education or pleasure.

Congress has led the push for a tougher response on Xinjiang and in May passed an act that authorised sanctions, listing Mr Chen by name, although Mr Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took Friday’s actions under separate authorities.

In a fresh effort, 78 members of congress across party lines released a letter that urged President Donald Trump’s administration to consider formally designating China’s policies as genocide.

AFP