You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

House Votes for Bill to Punish China over Mass Imprisonment of Muslims

HeadlineDec 04, 2019

The House of Representatives has overwhelmingly voted for legislation that requires President Trump to impose sanctions against senior Chinese officials involved in the mass detention camps of Muslim Uyghurs in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang. The Chinese government responded angrily to the legislation’s passage. This is the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson.

Hua Chunying: “No person should underestimate the Chinese government’s resolution and ability to defend our national sovereignty, national security and developmental interests. Anyone who wants to use Hong Kong and Xinjiang issues to interfere and restrain China’s development must be delusional.”

The House’s passage of the Uyghur Act of 2019 comes as The New York Times reports Chinese officials in Xinjiang are collecting blood samples en masse in efforts to build a system capable of creating an image of a person’s face using DNA. The United States is also separately seeking to develop this technology, which raises vast concerns about privacy and state surveillance.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top