US Imposes Trade Restrictions on Chinese, Russian Firms
The United States on Tuesday announced trade restrictions on eight companies, including two Chinese and several Russian, over allegations of human rights abuses.
The China-based companies identified include Zhejiang Uniview Technologies, which U.S. officials accuse of enabling human rights abuses such as surveillance of Uighurs and other ethnic and religious minorities.
Another company named by the U.S. Commerce Department is Beijing Zhongdun Security Technology Group, which it says develops and sells products that enable public security authorities to commit human rights abuses.
The businesses were added to an “entity list,” which requires U.S. companies to obtain permits before exporting to them.
“Human rights abuses are contrary to the foreign policy interests of the United States,” Undersecretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Alan Estevez said in a statement.
Adding the companies to the entity list aims to “ensure that American technology is not used to enable human rights abuses and violations,” he added.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Wednesday that the sanctions amounted to “open and fearless suppression of Chinese high-tech companies under the pretext of human rights.”
“This further exposes the falsehood that the United States protects human rights, and the reality that the United States deprives the Chinese people of their right to development. Such a strategy will never work,” Mao Ning said at a regular news conference.
“If the United States truly cares about human rights, it should first patch up its human rights debts.”
A man who answered a phone number linked to Beijing Zhongdun on Wednesday hung up after an AFP reporter identified him.
Calls to two numbers linked to Zhejiang Uniview went unanswered.
The U.S. government and lawmakers in several other Western countries have criticized China’s treatment of the Uighur minority in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
Human rights groups say at least 1 million people, mostly members of the Muslim minority, have been imprisoned in the region and face a range of abuses — while Beijing vehemently denies the allegations.
Source: VOA
