No Dollars to Uyghur Forced Labor Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MORAN. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of my bill, H.R. 4039, the No Dollars to Uyghur Forced Labor Act, and I urge my colleagues to vote in support of this important measure.

Slavery in any form is repugnant and morally wrong. America--the home of the brave and the land of the free--should not be complicit in the Chinese Communist Party's genocide, oppression, and enslavement of Uyghur Muslims.

Currently, the China Communist Party is using over 100,000 Uyghur Muslims as slave labor. The No Dollars to Uyghur Forced Labor Act will ensure that the U.S. plays no part in this atrocity.

Specifically, H.R. 4039 prohibits the State Department and USAID from developing or designing international contracts with companies that import or source any raw materials or goods that were manufactured, produced, or mined from the Xinjiang region of China.

My legislation would also require a report to Congress identifying all violations in the previous year with a plan to improve enforcement and compliance.

Xinjiang is an important region to China's economy. It represents one-sixth of China's land mass, and is home to most of their cotton, coal, and natural gas reserves. It is considered the core hub for China's Belt and Road Initiative, which is China's primary tool to exert economic influence across the globe.

Many basic goods that we consider to be part of our everyday lives are being produced by forced labor in Xinjiang--raw materials like yarn, bricks, nails, cotton, hair products, gloves, and polysilicon, which is commonly used for solar panel manufacturing--all essential resources for global commerce.

There is no excuse for the United States to continue in any partnership with companies that do business in Xinjiang and perpetuate these gross human rights abuses that the CCP has been committing against ethnic minorities for decades.

In addition to those enslaved, between 1 and 2 million people have been detained arbitrarily by the CCP and placed in what they call reeducation centers where they have little to no freedom and undergo intense indoctrination at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.

Many who have endured these centers note that they were just paid 2 pennies or less to make a pair of gloves. Those who are enslaved are unable to leave, see their families, or communicate with their loved ones.

The CCP's tactics of threats, intimidation, confinement, and physical and emotional abuse is intended to oppress its people, force assimilation, and in the process, grow its economic influence worldwide.

Victims have no hope of life elsewhere. They know they will be monitored by police through oppressive surveillance systems. Survivors recount that the CCP cancel passports and lure minorities to China only then to detain them and use them for forced labor.

The CCP reels in Uyghurs by offering free health services and then invades their lives and privacy by taking their DNA, fingerprints, and blood samples, which are then exported to malign actors. Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of their captivity and their oppression.

If that is the society that the CCP is creating, we in the United States must act aggressively and immediately to make perfectly clear that we will not condone such brutality and such a cruel regime. What is more, the United States will not be a party to these atrocities.

America must continue to act with strength on the foreign stage. We cannot allow totalitarian regimes to grow in strength and influence around the world. If we do, then what is happening to the Uyghurs in China will surely follow wherever China builds its empire. We simply cannot let this happen.

We, in the United States, must stand for morality, we must stand for goodness, and we must stand for freedom.

Madam Speaker, I call on my colleagues to do just that by passing H.R. 4039.

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