The United States is upping the ante and rallying its allies to implement a law that bans goods from a Xinjiang region citing Beijing’s alleged genocide against Uighurs and other Muslim groups. “Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act” was being implemented from Tuesday by US Customs and Border Protection. US President Joe Biden introduced the law in December.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement on Tuesday said that, “We are rallying our allies and partners to make global supply chains free from the use of forced labour, to speak out against atrocities in Xinjiang, and to join us in calling on the government of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) to immediately end atrocities and human rights abuses, including forced labour.”
“Together with our interagency partners, we will continue to engage companies to remind them of US legal obligations,” added Blinken.
According to Al Jazeera, “US Customs said it is ready to implement the law’s “rebuttable presumption” that all goods from Xinjiang, where Chinese authorities established detention camps for Uighurs and other Muslim groups, are made with forced labour and barred from import to the US unless it can be proven otherwise.”
US Customs have insisted that a very high level of evidence would be required for importers to exempted from the law.
“Big lie concocted by anti-China forces”
Rebutting the accusations of forced labour in Xinjiang region, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the claims were a were a “big lie concocted by anti-China forces”.
“With this so-called law, the United States is trying to create forced unemployment in Xinjiang and to push for the world to decouple with China,” said Wang, slamming the United States.
Although Beijing has periodically denied the existence of detention camps but later admitted it had set up “vocational training centres” insisting that it was necessary to curb what it claims is terrorism, separatism and religious radicalism in Xinjiang.
