Fairfax, Va – U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) this week introduced a bipartisan resolution to designate human rights abuses perpetrated by the People’s Republic of China against the Uyghur people and other ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) as genocide. The resolution would hold China accountable under the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and begin the process to coordinate an international response to bring these abuses to a halt.
They were joined by Sens. James Risch (R-ID), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR).
Americans for Limited Government president Rick Manning praised this resolution as the latest development in the growing movement to condemn China’s human rights abuses.
“Standing together against Communist China’s human rights abuses of its own citizens is a bipartisan issue,” Manning said. “All Americans should agree with. The resolution by Senators Robert Menendez and John Cornyn designating the abuses of the Uyghur people as genocide is evidence that when it comes to China and slave labor concentration camps, forced organ harvesting, and religious persecution, Americans are in complete agreement.
“Now it is time to do something more than complain,” concluded Manning. “I call on our leaders in Washington to take action to divest all federal and state resources from Chinese assets.”
Americans for Limited Government is part of a national coalition seeking to divest all state, federal, and private pension funds from Chinese companies, many of which are engaged in child and slave labor or pose a direct threat to U.S. national security.
Last month, the Department of Labor took steps to combat these exploitive labor practices by releasing its biennial list of goods produced under conditions of forced labor. China topped the list at 17 goods – four more than any other country. The list and the Department’s “Comply Chain” and “Sweat & Toil” smartphone apps, help governments, companies, and consumers fight back against abusive labor practices and, by doing so, protect individuals impressed into forced and child labor because of their religious beliefs.
In August, a top State Department official warned college and university governing boards served notice that the value of Chinese stocks and bonds are likely to be decline as a result of U.S. government action and that they should, therefore, divest from China.
In May, the Department of Labor halted all investing of federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) assets in Chinese companies. The TSP is a retirement savings and investment plan for federal employees and members of the uniformed services.
To learn more go to divestchinanow.org
Background:
Since 2017, the Chinese Communist Party has detained an estimated 1.8 million Turkic Muslims, mostly Uyghurs, in internment camps without due process. Detained Uyghurs are tortured, coerced to disavow their religious beliefs and cultural practices, compelled to work in forced labor programs, and, in some cases, raped, subjected to involuntary sterilization, and forced organ harvesting.
As a direct result of the CCP’s targeted population control campaign against Uyghurs, the birthrate of the Uyghur population in the XUAR plummeted by 24% from 2017 to 2018, with birthrates in the Uyghur majority regions of Hotan and Kashgar decreasing by more than 60% from 2015 to 2018. In 2018, 80 percent of all net added IUD placements in China (calculated as placements minus removals) were performed in Xinjiang, despite the fact that the region only makes up 1.8 percent of the nation’s population.
Nearly half a million Muslim children in Xinjiang have been forcibly removed from their families, placed in state-run boarding schools, and subjected to indoctrination and inhumane treatment. Between 2017 and 2019, an estimated 80,000 Uyghurs were forcibly transferred out of the XUAR to work in factories across China which has raised concerns of forced labor being used in global supply chains.