China announced it is banning a United States research company and two analysts from entering the country because they have been reporting on the human rights abuses China has committed against Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in the nation.
According to the Associated Press, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning announced earlier this month that a Los Angeles research and data analytics firm called Kharon along with its director of investigations, Edmund Xu, are banned from traveling to China. In addition, Nicole Morgret, a human rights analyst affiliated with the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, is also prohibited from entering China.
Mao said the sanctions are retaliation for a yearly U.S. government report on human rights in Xinjiang, where Uyghur Muslims live. They are native to the area and oppose China’s attempts to assimilate them into the majority Han ethnic group.
In a June 2022 paper, Morgret wrote, “The Chinese government is undertaking a concerted drive to industrialize the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which has led an increasing number of corporations to establish manufacturing operations there. This centrally-controlled industrial policy is a key tool in the government’s efforts to forcibly assimilate Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples through the institution of a coerced labor regime.”
READ: Uyghur women testify of rape, torture, forced sterilization in China’s concentration camps
An independent report from 2021, published by the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, determined that China “bears responsibility for an ongoing genocide” and that the nation’s government has violated every provision of the 1948 Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, with an “intent to destroy” the Uyghur people.
As previously reported by Live Action News, the genocide began in 2014, when President Xi Jinping ordered a “People’s War on Terror” in Xinjiang, where 90% of the residents are Uyghur Muslims. Officials were told to “round up everyone who should be rounded up,” “wipe them out completely… destroy them root and branch,” and “break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins.” By 2017, internment had begun, and it is estimated that over one million Uyghurs are currently being held in concentration camps. They are victims of forced labor, torture, sexual assault, and murder.
In addition, Uyghur women are being subjected to forced sterilizations and abortions to prevent them from being “baby-making machines.” Children have been taken from their parents and placed in government-run facilities to be raised with Chinese culture, education, and language instead of their own.
World leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, have failed to condemn the genocide or take action to stop it.
