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The Trump administration announced sanctions on Thursday aimed at Chinese Communist Party officials whom the United States believes have been involved in carrying out human rights abuses against Uighurs and other minorities in China.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control revealed the sanctions against a Chinese Communist Party entity and four Chinese Communist Party officials “in connection with serious rights abuses against ethnic minorities” in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in western China. These designations under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act include XUAR Chinese Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo and former XUAR Deputy Party Secretary Zhu Hailun. The Xinjiang Public Security Bureau was also targeted by U.S. sanctions, and the U.S. also designated XPSB Director and Communist Party Secretary Wang Mingshan and former XPSB Party Secretary Huo Liujun.
The U.S. said the Chinese government officials were being designated “for their connection to serious human rights abuse against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, which reportedly include mass arbitrary detention and severe physical abuse, among other serious abuses targeting Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim population indigenous to Xinjiang, and other ethnic minorities in the region.”
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declared that “the United States is committed to using the full breadth of its financial powers to hold human rights abusers accountable in Xinjiang and across the world.”