The United States has imposed trade restrictions on two Chinese firms for alleged human rights violations as Joe Biden continues to keep up the heat on Beijing in the remaining few days of his presidency.
The Commerce Department, which oversees export policy, said in a filing that they added Zhejiang Uniview Technologies Co. Ltd. to the entity list.
The department said that Zhejiang Uniview Technologies Co. Ltd. was enabling human rights violations.
The violations were in the nature of high-technology surveillance targeted at the general population, Uyghurs, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups.
China’s Beijing Zhongdun Security Technology Group Co., Ltd. was added for selling products that “enable China’s public security establishment to carry out human rights violations”.
Uniview did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Beijing Zhongdun Security could not be reached for comment.
In recent years, the United States has used the entity list to punish Chinese firms it accuses of aiding in China’s repression of Uyghur and other minority groups, including Chinese video surveillance company Hikvision in 2019.
Being added to the entity list forces American suppliers of the targeted company to get a difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to them.
Six other entities in Russia and Myanmar were also added on Tuesday.
Earlier in August, Matthew Miller, US State Department spokesperson, said that China should take immediate action to end ‘ongoing repression’ of Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic and religious minority groups in the country.
He made the remark on the second anniversary of the release of a report by the United Nations on the state of human rights violations in Xinjiang region of China.
The Uyghur repression in China is a serious human rights issue.
The Chinese government has been accused of detaining over one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in “re-education” camps.
In these camps, the Uyghurs are subjected to forced labor, torture, and indoctrination.
The US has been vocal about the issue.
Lawmakers and officials have called for sanctions and other measures to pressure China to stop the repression.
(With inputs from Reuters)
