Washington: A bipartisan group of powerful US lawmakers Thursday introduced legislations in Congress to hold China accountable for its alleged human rights violations against ethnic and religious minorities.
The legislation, introduced in the Senate and the House of Representatives, seeks to provide policymakers with new tools and information to address the human rights abuses committed by the Chinese Communist party officials and local authorities in the country’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
Over a million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim ethnic minorities in the region have been interned in “political reeducation” camps and the entire families of Uyghur advocates for human rights in China have disappeared, including many US citizens, the lawmakers said.
The legislation was introduced in the Senate by Senators Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez and in the House by Congressmen Chris Smith and Thomas Suozzi.
CHINESE GULAGS
- China’s domestic security budgets outweigh its military budget
- After mass self-immolations in Tibet and riots in Xinjiang, the government has become warier of any incidents
- Beijing has detained about 1 million Uighur Muslims at internment camps in Xinjiang for ‘de-radicalisation’
“The State Department has indicated that it is leading an interagency effort within the Administration to develop policy options in response to this brutal campaign of repression. The time for action is now,” Rubio said.
China comes down heavily on ‘coloured revolutions’
Beijing: The Chinese police must remain alert to any uprisings and defend the political stability of the country, the country’s top security official has said. The extremely paranoid Chinese government represses any form of dissent which according to it can turn into a movement. China’s Public Security Minister Zhao Kezhi Thursday said the police must “prevent coloured revolutions”, a term used for popular uprisings in some countries in early 2000. Kezhi asked the police to protect China’s political security and the leadership of the ruling Communist Party. His remarks were posted on the website of the Ministry of Public Security. The minister also said the police must guard against infiltration and any subversive activities by foreign forces in the country.
