Chinese Communist Party officials involved in mass crackdown on Uighur Muslims are barred from entering the United States, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced today.
“Family members of such persons may also be subject to these restrictions,” Pompeo said in a bulletin issued on Tuesday.
The imposition of visa restrictions is the latest example of the State Department’s intensifying diplomatic clash with China over human rights. Pompeo, whose team compared China’s detention of Uighurs in “reeducation camps” to the atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany, has made religious freedom a centerpiece of U.S. condemnation of the Chinese government.
“The United States calls on the People’s Republic of China to immediately end its campaign of repression in Xinjiang, release all those arbitrarily detained, and cease efforts to coerce members of Chinese Muslim minority groups residing abroad to return to China to face an uncertain fate,” Pompeo said in the bulletin. “The protection of human rights is of fundamental importance, and all countries must respect their human rights obligations and commitments.”
U.S. officials under Trump have used visa restrictions to punish human rights abusers and put pressure on other pariah governments, such as Venezuela. The visa restrictions come on the heels of a Commerce Department announcement that 28 Chinese companies are barred from purchasing U.S. technology, as China is turning the traditional Uighur home of Xinjiang into a high-tech surveillance state.
“The U.S. Government and Department of Commerce cannot and will not tolerate the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities within China,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Monday. “This action will ensure that our technologies, fostered in an environment of individual liberty and free enterprise, are not used to repress defenseless minority populations.”
Pompeo hinted that more punishments could be forthcoming. “The United States will continue to review its authorities to respond to these abuses,” he said.
