Amid worsening relations between China and the United States, US President Joe Biden signed a new law today banning import of products made in China’s Xinjiang region because of China’s oppression of its largely Muslim Uighur minority population.
Pushed by members of the United States Congress, the law passed in both the House of Representatives and the Senate by unanimous votes earlier this month.
The new law imposes a near-blanket ban on the import to the US of goods from Xinjiang by requiring suppliers to first prove their products were not made with forced labour. Xinjiang is a large supplier of cotton and solar panels to the United States.
United Nations experts and rights groups have estimated that more than one million people, mainly Uighurs and members of other Muslim minorities, have been imprisoned in recent years in a vast system of camps in Xinjiang. The US and many rights groups have called it “genocide“.
“It is a horrifying human rights situation, fully sanctioned – as we now know – by the Communist Party of China,” US Senator Marco Rubio, the lead Republican sponsor of the bill, said last week.
China has rejected allegations of abuse in Xinjiang, accusing countries and rights organisations of launching “slanderous attacks” about conditions for Muslim Uighurs and other minorities in the far western region.
The Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Reuters news agency on the new US law on Thursday.
