Recently the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on two Chinese officials for their alleged role in cruel treatment of Uyghurs
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI — The United States has termed the China’s actions against Uyghur Muslim minority population in Xinjaing as “genocide and crimes against humanity”.
The 2020 human rights report by the department of state released on Tuesday “shows that the trend lines on human rights continue to move in the wrong direction,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said while speaking at a news conference.
The report which gives a picture of the human rights violations around the globe put China at the top for its conduct in Xinjiang.
“Too many people continued to suffer under brutal conditions in 2020,” the report read, “In China, government authorities committed genocide against Uyghurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and crimes against humanity including imprisonment, torture, enforced sterilisation, and persecution against Uyghurs and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups.”
Blinken said the report was important but not enough suggesting that the US will use a broad range of other tools to hold perpetrators to account, including imposing sanctions.
Recently the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on two Chinese officials for their alleged role in cruel treatment of Uyghurs. The Chinese in response emulated the US and sanctioned two two commissioners on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The report comes at a time when the US has ramped up its campaign against China, world’s second largest economy. The Biden election campaign had also termed China’s treatment in Xinjian a “genocide”.
However, Bilinken Washington was not trying to contain China by this report.
The report, which focuses only on the year 2020, also slams China’s crackdown on Hong Kong protests and Covid-19 whistleblower.
A couple of weeks back Blinken, the US national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with top Chinese diplomats Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi Alaska, where Yang said Washington was not in a position to criticise Beijing.
Then, China released its own human rights report hitting on the US over issues of racial discrimination, gun violence and the loss of half a million lives to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Blinken said at the Press Conference that the US will be told by some countries that “we have no right to criticise them, because we have our own challenges to deal with”.
He said the US was different from others in that they deal with these issues “in the daylight instead of sweeping them under the rug”
