Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in favor of S. 178, the UIGHUR Act of 2019.

This bill has the best of both worlds: It has a Senate bill number and House of Representatives content. The bill came over from the Senate, and then we unanimously adopted, in the Foreign Affairs Committee, my amendment in the nature of a substitute, which put together three bills focused on the Uighur issue. It included the work of Senators Marco Rubio and Robert Menendez found in S. 178; the work found in H.R. 649 of Chris Smith and Tom Suozzi of this House; and the legislation that I reintroduced with the ranking member of the Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation Subcommittee, Ted Yoho, H.R. 1025.

So this bill represents putting together those three bills to deal with the detention of over 1 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang and other Chinese repression of its Muslim minority population.

The Chinese Government has sought to erase the distinct Uighur Muslim culture and religious traditions through mass detentions, reeducation camps, and a coordinated campaign under the banner ``Strike Hard Against Violent Extremism'' launched in 2014.

Thanks to recently leaked Chinese Communist Party documents, we now know that the impetus for this campaign came from the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.

In April 2014, General Secretary Xi ordered the party officials to, and these are the words, show ``absolutely no mercy'' in using ``organs of dictatorship,'' another quoted phrase, to suppress Muslim minorities. More than a million Uighurs were then imprisoned in camps.

In a country with the rule of law, you are incarcerated by the state because you have been convicted of a defined statutory offense. Why are 1 million people behind barbed wire in the Xinjiang province of China? The charge against them is ``their thinking has been infected by unhealthy thoughts.''

Where in the world would anyone be free if a million people can be incarcerated because the government has determined that their thoughts are unhealthy?

Along with reeducation camps, the Strike Hard campaign has also involved high-tech surveillance and monitoring of Uighurs, monitoring and suppressing Muslim religious practice, including funeral practices, and suppression of the Uighur language.

Beyond its borders, the party has tried to intimidate Chinese Muslim minorities who are living abroad. And in China, some individuals with permanent residency status in the United States have been prohibited from leaving the region. In Xinjiang, the party has forced Uighur families to have Han Chinese agents live in their homes.

The extent of this Chinese effort to, in effect, ``sinofy'' the Muslim population of western China is staggering. The legislation before us is an important start, but it is only a start in our efforts to counter Chinese repression of its Muslim minorities, and we will have hearings in the Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation Subcommittee to develop additional steps that America could take.

I want to highlight two parts of this legislation. First, the bill requires the President to impose the Global Magnitsky sanctions against all Chinese officials who are responsible for the repression of the Uighurs. We are long past the point when this should have been done, and it should not be linked to ongoing negotiations on trade or any other issue.

Second, the bill requires the Commerce Department to update our export controls to ensure that the Commerce Control List, which covers dual-use items, is updated to create a special regime for China. Commerce will be required to identify items that assist in the monitoring, surveillance, mass detention, and forced labor we see going on in China today, and deny licenses for the export or reexport of those items to China.

U.S. technology should not be used to further one of the most egregious human rights abuses of our time. And in writing this legislation and the amendment in the nature of a substitute that came out of the Foreign Affairs Committee, we worked diligently to ensure that we avoid capturing too much and unduly hindering legitimate and beneficial commerce, including thorough discussions with the tech industry.

So I thank Chairman Engel and Ranking Member McCaul, of course, our Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who was here. I thank Senators Rubio and Menendez, Chris Smith, and Tom Suozzi. I thank Jim McGovern for his work, and I thank my partner in running the Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation Subcommittee, Mr. Yoho.

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