Washington, May 15: The US Senate has passed legislation on Friday to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for human rights violations against the Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in the country.
The Senate passed the measure by unanimous consent and it will now head to the House of Representatives for consideration.
The bill condemns human rights violations of ethnic Turkic Muslims in the Chinese city of Xinjiang and calls for an end to arbitrary detention and harassment of these communities inside – and outside – China.
The Uyghurs tried to seek independence from China from the 1930s to the 1940s. In recent years, the Chinese government introduced stricter security measures in the region, justifying their actions by referencing the fight against extremism.
China has been criticized for reportedly holding up to one million ethnic Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in “re-education camps” under the pretext of fighting terrorism and religious extremism as of last summer.
Beijing has denied the existence of “re-education camps” on numerous occasions, insisting that the country is fully complying with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. (PTI)
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