torsdag 18. november 2021

US Senate Passes Bill to Ban All Imports From China’s Xinjiang

The U.S. Senate has passed legislation that bans the import of products from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), in the latest move by Washington to penalize Beijing for forced labor and other abuses it says constitute genocide against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs. The bipartisan Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which was passed unanimously Wednesday, would create what is referred to as a “rebuttable presumption” that assumes goods made in the XUAR are produced with forced labor and thus banned under the 1930 Tariff Act.

It places the onus on importing companies to prove that goods coming from the XUAR or other Chinese government labor schemes for Uyghurs are not made with forced labor in order to win government certification. The bill also addresses human rights violations against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims through targeted sanctions those deemed responsible for abuses committed in the XUAR.