Washington

The United States has slammed China for its religious repression and committing genocide against Uighurs. In the annual report on religious freedom across the world, released by the US State Department, the country's ambassador Rashad Hussain has said “far too many governments remain undeterred of their repression of their citizens”.

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“It comes as no surprise that the People’s Republic of China is a glaring example here,” he told reporters.

“The PRC government continue[s] to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uighurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups.”

According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, ''China continues its genocide and repression of predominantly Muslim Uighurs and other religious minority groups.''

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''Since April 2017 more than one million Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and others have been detained in internment camps in Xinjiang," he added.

Initially, China had denied the existence of any detention camps in Xinjiang. In 2018, Beijing said it had set up "vocational training centres" necessary to curb what it said was terrorism, separatism, and religious radicalism in the region.

“NGOs and media continued to report deaths in custody and that the government tortured, physically abused, arrested, disappeared, detained, sentenced to prison, subjected to forced labor and forced indoctrination in CCP ideology, and harassed adherents of both registered and unregistered religious groups for activities related to their religious beliefs and practices,” according to the 2021 Report on International Religious Freedom.

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US authorities are ready to implement a ban on imports from China's Xinjiang region when a law requiring it becomes enforceable later in June.

''We're all on a very tight timeframe,'' Elva Muneton, Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) acting executive director for the UFLPA Implementation Task Force said.

"The expectation is that we will be ready to implement the Uyghur act on June 21, and that we have the resources," Muneton told a webinar on enforcing the law. "So the question is, are we ready to implement? Yes, we are," she said.

Also read | US slams China's efforts to restrict and manipulate UN rights chief visit to Xinjiang

Importers will have the option to re-export prohibited cargo back to the country of origin, and any exemptions to the presumption must be granted by the CBP commissioner and reported to Congress, Muneton said.

"It's important to know that the level of evidence that's going be required by the Uyghur act is very high," she said.

"It's going to require documentation, clear and convincing evidence, that the supply chain of the product that's being imported is free from forced labor."

(With inputs from agencies)

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