The Biden government on Monday announced sanctions against two Chinese government officials over continued human rights abuses against the country’s Uighur minority.
The Treasury Department’s sanctions focus on Wang Junzheng, secretary of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Party Committee, and Chen Mingguo, director of the Xinjiang Department of Public Security.
The Treasury Department said the pair was “linked to serious human rights abuses against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, which allegedly include arbitrary detention and serious physical abuse, among other serious human rights abuses against Uighurs, a Turkish Muslim population native to Xinjiang. and other ethnic minority groups in the region. “
The sanctions were imposed in coordination with similar initiatives by the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada, the department said.
“Chinese authorities will continue to face the consequences as long as atrocities occur in Xinjiang,” which houses detention camps that have kept Uighur Muslims, said Andrea M. Gacki, director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. She said the department “is committed to promoting accountability for human rights abuses by the Chinese government, including arbitrary detention and torture against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the move, saying that China “continues to commit genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. The United States reiterates its calls to the PRC to end the crackdown on Uighurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang, including the release of all arbitrarily detained in internment camps and detention centers. “
The Treasury Department also announced sanctions against two individuals linked to the Myanmar military, who took control of the country previously known as Burma earlier this year. Than Hlaing, who was appointed head of the Burma Police Force and deputy minister for internal affairs last month, and Lt. Gen. Aung Soe, commander of the Bureau of Special Operations, are responsible for violent crackdowns on peaceful protests, said the Department.
Gacki said the sanctions are “a response to the continuing campaign of violence and intimidation by the Burmese military against peaceful demonstrators and civil society”.
“The lethal violence by Burmese security forces against peaceful protesters must end,” she said.
Monday’s decision marks the second time last week that the United States has targeted Beijing. The Biden government sanctioned 24 Chinese and Hong Kong officials for their crackdown on political freedoms in the city just days before the two countries met for the first face-to-face meeting. The US-China talks, held Thursday and Friday in Anchorage, Alaska, began with an on-camera dispute that lasted more than an hour.
“We knew it would be straightforward and frank and that we would have to cover a number of issues about which we have deep concerns about China’s policies, whether in Xinjiang or Hong Kong or Tibet or Taiwan,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who led the US delegation alongside Secretary of State Antony Blinken, told NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell on Monday.
Sullivan said the discussions also included issues of potential mutual interest, such as Iran, Afghanistan and climate change, but the United States emphasized that working on these issues would not lead to concessions on others.
“There are places in our relationship where it is in America’s national interest to work together and other places where we will react aggressively against behavior that we consider intolerable,” said Sullivan. “And that is what we did today in partnership with our allies to issue these sanctions for what China is doing to Uighurs in Xinjiang.”
