Dharamshala, 27th December: An Arkansas man and three other Americans have been sanctioned by the Chinese government for accusing Beijing of persecuting its Uyghur community. Members of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, including James Carr of Searcy, have consistently decried the Communist government’s treatment of religious minorities, including the mostly Muslim Uyghurs.
The US State Department accused China of genocide in the Xinjiang region of northwest China against Uyghurs and members of other minority religious and ethnic groups in January; China is also shown as persecuting Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners, according to the committee. Beijing officials refuted the charge.
The US State Department sanctioned four current and former Chinese officials on Dec. 10 for what it called “gross human rights violations” in Xinjiang. China has retaliated by imposing “reciprocal countermeasures” on the four Americans, according to Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian.
During a press conference in Beijing, she stated “These individuals are prohibited from entering the mainland, Hong Kong and Macao of China. Their property in China will be frozen, and Chinese citizens and institutions will be prohibited from doing business with them,”
She went on to say that China’s “Anti-foreign Sanctions Law” allows for such punishments.
Carr, who has traveled to China twice in the last 15 years, found out Tuesday morning that he, commission chair Nadine Maenza, vice-chair Nury Turkel, and colleague commissioner Anurima Bhargava had been targeted.
The commission chair said she was disappointed in a written statement released this week “It’s not surprising to see the Chinese government impose more arbitrary sanctions in response to mounting international outrage over the country’s egregious human rights and religious freedom violations, particularly its genocidal policies against Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang. USCIRF will not be silenced, as we have previously stated.”
The commission portrays itself as an “independent, bipartisan federal government institution formed by the United States Congress to monitor, assess, and report on risks to religious freedom abroad,” as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.
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