American lawmakers are trying to “sabotage” U.S.-China relations by urging President Trump to sanction Communist officials involved in human rights abuses, according to a senior diplomat in Beijing.
A bipartisan group of legislators has asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to blacklist Chinese authorities responsible for the repression of Uighur Muslims, an ethnic and religious minority. China, which admits to sending Uighurs to re-education camps but defends the policy as a counterterrorism tool, lashed out at the newest call for human rights sanctions to punish the crackdown.
“We hope the U.S. individuals you mentioned will respect facts and stop such actions that smear other governments and sabotage China-U.S. relations, which also runs counter to their own interests,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters Tuesday, according to the official briefing transcript.
He aired that complaint while commenting on a letter sent Monday by House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and three other members of the panel. The bipartisan quartet faulted Pompeo for a failure to impose sanctions “in response to egregious human rights abuses” underway in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
“The United States must stand up for the oppressed and, at every opportunity, make clear to the Chinese government that the situation in XUAR is a priority for the U.S. Government,” the congressmen wrote Monday. “This issue is bigger than just China. It is about demonstrating to strongmen globally that the world will hold them accountable for their actions.”
The letter was also signed by Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., and Rep. Ted Yoho of Florida — who lead the Foreign Affairs subcommittee for the Asia-Pacific region — as well as Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., the top Republican on the subcommittee that oversees human rights policies. The call for sanctions was raised in September, following testimony from a top U.S. diplomat who appeared before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
“Beijing wagers that it now possesses the political, diplomatic, and technological capabilities to transform religion and ethnicity in Chinese society in a way that its predecessors never could, even during the peak horrors of the Cultural Revolution and other heinous Maoist campaigns intended to remake Chinese society,” Ambassador Kelley Currie, the second-ranked U.S. representative at the United Nations, told lawmakers last year.
China has denied charges that it working to eliminate the presence of Uighurs as “venomous attacks” designed to embarrass the government.
“For some time, certain individuals of certain countries have been playing up issues in China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and leveling venomous attacks against the preventive counterterrorism and de-radicalization measures the Chinese government has taken to keep Xinjiang a stable and tranquil place where people of various ethnic groups live happily together,” the Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
