US Senate passes Uighur Rights bill to pressure China amid worsening relations

The Senate passed a bill condemning gross human rights violations of Uighur Muslims in Xinjian region of China and calling on the US President to toughen administration’s response to China’s crackdown. The bill, introduced by Senator Marco Rubio, calls for sanctions against those involved in the oppression of Uighur Muslims.

The bipartisan bill, Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, was unanimously passed in Senate without requiring a roll-call vote. It will now move to the House of Representatives, controlled by Democrats, and if approved, it will be sent to US President Donald Trump to sign it into law or veto it.

Calling China’s alleged effort to wipe out the ethnic identities of Uighurs “horrific”, Rubio welcomed the passage of the bill and said that it will be a stain on humanity if the US refuses to act. The Florida Senator thanked colleagues for working together to send a clear message to Chinese officials responsible for “egregious human rights abuses” committed against the Uyghurs.

“I urge the House to act swiftly so that this important, bipartisan bill can be signed into law without any further delay,” said Rubio in a statement.

Several leaked from China have revealed Beijing’s brutal and systematic crackdown on Uighurs which they allegedly call “struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism”. After Uighur militants stabbed more than 150 people at a train station in 2014, Jinping, in a series of speeches delivered to officials, urged the party to follow America’s policy of “war on terror”.

Read: UN Demands 'unfettered Access' For China Uighur Region Visit

Mass surveillance

According to another set of classified documents leaked to International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), China has deployed Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP) to collect personal information on citizens and created a lengthy list of “suspicious” people based on this data. The leaked classified documents, known as China Cables, described the detention camps holding over a million Uighur Muslims. The documents contained ‘telegram’, basically the operations manual with guidelines to manage to the camps.

Read: Leaked Data Shows China's Uighurs Detained Due To Religion

Read: China's Uighurs Trapped In Factory Toiling For Tech Titans

(Image Credit: AP)