Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020

Floor Speech

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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, today, I am proud the House and Senate have come together in a bipartisan way to pass S. 3744, the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020.

This is monumental legislation that provides the administration a clear direction for implementing U.S. policy and sends a clear message that the United States supports the human rights of Uyghurs and other ethnic minority groups in China.

I thank Congressmen Chris Smith, Brad Sherman, and Tom Suozzi, and Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Engel and Ranking Member McCaul for their leadership on this bill.

We now believe that as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minority groups have been arbitrarily detained in mass internment camps and subjected to forced labor, torture, and political indoctrination.

In recent months, we have seen leaked internal Chinese Government documents that show the scope and implementation of the mass internment camp system, including: evidence that the camp system is organized at the direction of top Chinese Government officials, documentation that punishments can be based on the behavior of their relatives outside the camps, outlining the use of coercive force and punishment inflicted upon inmates in a manual, guidance for how Chinese officials should use surveillance to determine who to detain in the camps, and evidence of the assignment of mass internment camp detainees to forced labor.

There can be no doubt that the Chinese Government is trying to stamp out the Uyghur identity. The policies of the Chinese Government contravene the letter and the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and violate the government's obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China has signed but not ratified, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights ratified by China in 2001.

It is important to always make clear that our criticism is focused on the Chinese Government. We respect the Chinese people, many of whom have suffered from and are victims of the authoritarian policies of the government.

Last year, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which I chair, published a report making the case that the persecution of Uyghurs may fit the definition of crimes against humanity as defined in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

In March, the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the Holocaust Memorial Museum also determined that there is a ``reasonable basis to believe that the Government of China is committing crimes against humanity.''

Passage of the legislation is an important first step, but there is much more that we need to do.

First, the administration should impose Global Magnitsky Act sanctions on Chinese officials who are directing ongoing human rights abuses, including Chen Quanguo, the Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary.

Second, the administration should further expand the Commerce Department's ``Entity List,'' which imposes restrictions on businesses and entities that provide technology, training, or equipment that has been used in mass detentions or surveillance.

Third, I have introduced the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, H.R. 6210, that would prohibit imports from Xinjiang to the United States unless companies can prove that their goods were not produced with forced labor.

Too many U.S. and international companies are complicit in the exploitation of the forced labor of Uyghur and other Muslim minorities.

I am proud to stand in solidarity with the Uyghur, Chinese, Tibetan, and, indeed, all the people living under the rule of the Chinese Government in their struggle to live freely, practice their religious beliefs freely, and speak their own languages freely.

I look forward to the passage of this legislation and continuing our bipartisan work together to support human rights in China.

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