NEWS//U.S. House votes to defend Uighurs
The US House of Representatives passed the Uighur Act of 2019 on December 3. The bill has angered China which now threatens to derail a solution to the trade war between the U.S. and China.
The U.S. Senate must act on the bill before it will come to President Trump for approval. The Senate is expected to pass the bill within two weeks.
China defends itself
The bill's passage brought denials from China that it is mistreating its Uighur Muslim minority. China also claims that the United States is meddling in its internal affairs. China's foreign ministry condemned the move saying the bill "wantonly smears China's efforts to eliminate and combat extremism".
The Uighur bill, which was passed 407-1, requires the US president to condemn abuses against Muslims and call for the closure of mass detention camps in China's western region of Xinjiang. It urges Trump to impose sanctions for the first time on a member of China's powerful Politburo, Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo.
"Do you think if America takes actions to hurt China's interests we won't take any action," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters when asked whether the Uighur bill would affect the trade negotiations. "I think any wrong words and deeds must pay the due price." Hua said China would set no timeline or deadline for a trade deal and would take "decisive" countermeasures to defend its interests if what she called US protectionism and bullying over trade continued.
Uighurs situation
China is detaining over one million Uighurs in "re-education camps. It maintains that these camps are meant to fight extremism and separatism in the region. The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China describes it as "the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today."
A 2018 U.S. State Department Human Rights report detailed instances of torture, sexual abuse, repressive surveillance measures, forcible eating of pork and drinking of alcohol (both of which are forbidden for observant Muslims), confiscation of Qurans, and even deaths.
Sources: BBC, New York Post, CBS News, New York Times, Aljazeera (1), (2), (3)