Tibet human rights bill

US House Passes Bill on Sanctions Against Chinese Officials for Meddling in Dalai Lama's Succession.

The bill will also prohibit China from opening any new consulate in the US until Beijing allows Washington to open its diplomatic station in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

PTI

Washington/Beijing -- The US House of Representatives has passed a bill that authorises financial and travel sanctions against Chinese officials who interfere in the process of selecting the successor to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader based in India.
Introduced by Congressman James P McGovern, Chairman of the House Rules Committee and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, the bill was passed by a overwhelming vote of 392 to 22 on Tuesday.
The bill, if passed by the Senate and signed into law by the president, will also prohibit China from opening any new consulate in the US until Beijing allows Washington to open its diplomatic station in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.
According to the bill, the succession or reincarnation of Tibetan Buddhist leaders, including a future 15th Dalai Lama, is an exclusively religious matter that should be decided solely by the Tibetan Buddhist community.
Under the draft legislation, Washington would freeze any American asset and ban US travel of Chinese officials if they are found to be involved in "identifying or installing" a Dalai Lama approved by Beijing.
The Dalai Lama fled to India in early 1959 after a failed uprising against the Chinese rule.
While Beijing views the Dalai Lama as a separatist who seeks to split Tibet from China, the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate says he only seeks greater rights for Tibetans, including religious freedom and autonomy.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the bill sends Beijing a clear signal that it will be held accountable for interfering in Tibet's religious and cultural affairs.
The proposed legislation, she said, makes it clear that "Chinese officials who meddle in the process of recognising a new Dalai Lama will be subject to targeted sanctions, including those in the Global Magnitsky Act".
The Global Magnitsky Act allows the US to sanction foreign government officials implicated in human rights abuses anywhere in the world.
Pelosi said the bill deploys America's diplomatic weight to encourage a genuine dialogue between Tibetan leaders and Beijing.
"It is unacceptable that the Chinese government still refuses to enter into a dialogue with Tibetan leaders... We are supporting the Tibetan people's right to religious freedom and genuine autonomy by formally establishing as US policy that the Tibetan Buddhist community has the exclusive right to choose its religious leaders, including a future 15th Dalai Lama," she said.
Though introduced as a stand-alone piece of legislation, the bill serves as an amendment to the Tibet Policy Act of 2002, which codified the US position of support for the Tibetan people.
"Our bill updates and strengthens the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002 to address the challenges facing the Tibetan people. But perhaps as importantly, it reaffirms America's commitment to the idea that human rights matter. That we care about those who are oppressed, and we stand with those who are struggling for freedom," Congressman McGovern said on the House floor.
"It should be clear that we support a positive and productive US-China relationship, but it is essential that the human rights of all the people of China are respected by their government," he asserted.
Last year, the US Congress passed the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act, demanding that American journalists, diplomats and tourists be given the same freedom to travel to Tibet that Chinese officials have to travel freely in the US.
"The Dalai Lama should be commended for his decision to devolve political authority to elected leaders. The Tibetan exile community is also to be commended for adopting a system of self-governance with democratic institutions to choose their own leaders, including holding multiple 'free and fair' elections to select its Parliament and chief executive," McGovern said.
The bill also mandates the US State Department to begin collaborative and multinational efforts to protect the environment and water resources of the Tibetan Plateau.
"We are protecting Tibet's environmental and cultural rights: working with international governments and the business community to ensure the self-sufficiency of the Tibetan people and protect the environment and water resources on the Tibetan Plateau. It is really important to sustainability of our planet," Pelosi, a longtime advocate for Tibet, said.

Chinese Espionage: U.S. Expelled Chinese Officials After Breach of Military Base

Chinese Embassy officials trespassed onto a Virginia base that is home to Special Operations forces. 
By Edward Wong and Julian E. Barnes

Spy nest: The Chinese Embassy in Washington. The expulsions show the American government is now taking a harder line against espionage by China.

WASHINGTON — The American government secretly expelled two Chinese Embassy officials this fall after they drove on to a sensitive military base in Virginia, according to people with knowledge of the episode. 

The expulsions are the first of Chinese diplomats suspected of espionage in more than 30 years.American officials believe at least one of the Chinese officials was an intelligence officer operating under diplomatic cover, said six people with knowledge of the expulsions. 

The group, which included the officials’ wives, evaded military personnel pursuing them and stopped only after fire trucks blocked their path.
The episode in September, which neither Washington nor Beijing made public, has intensified concerns in the Trump administration that China is expanding its spying efforts in the United States.

American intelligence officials say China poses a greater espionage threat than any other country.In recent months, Chinese officials with diplomatic passports have become bolder about showing up unannounced at research or government facilities, American officials said, with the infiltration of the military base only the most remarkable instance.
The expulsions, apparently the first since the United States forced out two Chinese Embassy employees with diplomatic cover in 1987, show the American government is now taking a harder line against espionage by China, officials said.

On Oct. 16, weeks after the intrusion at the base, the State Department announced sharp restrictions on the activities of Chinese diplomats, requiring them to provide notice before meeting with local or state officials or visiting educational and research institutions.
At the time, a senior State Department official told reporters that the rule, which applied to all Chinese Missions in the United States and its territories, was a response to Chinese regulations imposed years ago requiring American diplomats to seek permission to travel outside their host cities or to visit certain institutions.
Two American officials said last week that those restrictions had been under consideration for a while because of growing calls in the American government for reciprocity, but episodes like the one at the base accelerated the rollout.
The base intrusion took place in late September on a sensitive installation near Norfolk, Va. 

The base includes Special Operations forces, said the people with knowledge of the incident. 

Several bases in the area have such units, including one with the headquarters of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team Six.

The Elizabeth River in Norfolk, Va. The military base intrusion took place in late September on an installation considered especially sensitive in the area.

The Chinese officials and their wives drove up to a checkpoint for entry to the base, said people briefed on the episode. 

A guard, realizing that they did not have permission to enter, told them to go through the gate, turn around and exit the base, which is common procedure in such situations.
But the Chinese officials instead continued on to the base, according to those familiar with the incident. 

After the fire trucks blocked them, the Chinese officials indicated that they had not understood the guard’s English instructions, and had simply gotten lost, according to people briefed on the matter.
American officials said they were skeptical that the intruders made an innocent error and dismissed the idea that their English was insufficient to understand the initial order to leave.
It is not clear what they were trying to do on the base, but some American officials said they believed it was to test the security at the installation, according to a person briefed on the matter. 

Had the Chinese officials made it onto the base without being stopped, the embassy could have dispatched a more senior intelligence officer to enter the base.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry and Chinese Embassy in Washington did not reply to requests for comment about the episode. 

Two associates of Chinese Embassy officials said they were told that the expelled officials were on a sightseeing tour when they accidentally drove onto the base.
The State Department, which is responsible for relations with the Chinese Embassy and its diplomats, and the F.B.I., which oversees counterintelligence in the United States, declined to comment.
Chinese Embassy officials complained to State Department officials about the expulsions and asked in a meeting whether the agency was retaliating for an official Chinese propaganda campaign in August against an American diplomat, Julie Eadeh. 

At the time, state-run news organizations accused Ms. Eadeh, a political counselor in Hong Kong, of being a “black hand” behind the territory’s pro-democracy protests, and personal details about her were posted online. 

A State Department spokeswoman called China a “thuggish regime.”
So far, China has not retaliated by expelling American diplomats or intelligence officers from the embassy in Beijing, perhaps a sign that Chinese officials understand their colleagues overstepped by trying to enter the base. 

One person who was briefed on reactions in the Chinese Embassy in Washington said he was told employees there were surprised that their colleagues had tried something so brazen.

The American Consulate in Hong Kong in September.

In 2016, Chinese officers in Chengdu abducted an American Consulate official they believed to be a C.I.A. officer, interrogated him and forced him to make a confession. 

Colleagues retrieved him the next day and evacuated him from the country. 

American officials threatened to expel suspected Chinese agents in the United States, but apparently did not do so.
China is detaining a Canadian diplomat on leave, Michael Kovrig, on espionage charges, though American officials say he is being held hostage because Canada arrested a prominent Chinese technology company executive at the request of American officials seeking her prosecution in a sanctions evasion case.
For decades, counterintelligence officials have tried to pinpoint embassy or consulate employees with diplomatic cover who are spies and assign officers to follow some of them. 

Now there is growing urgency to do that by both Washington and Beijing.
Evan S. Medeiros, a senior Asia director at the National Security Council under Barack Obama, said he was unaware of any expulsions of Chinese diplomats or spies with diplomatic cover during Obama’s time in office.
If it is rare for the Americans to expel Chinese spies or other embassy employees who have diplomatic cover, Medeiros said, “it’s probably because for much of the first 40 years, Chinese intelligence was not very aggressive.”
“But that changed about 10 years ago,” he added. 

“Chinese intelligence became more sophisticated and more aggressive, both in human and electronic forms.”
For instance, Chinese intelligence officers use LinkedIn to recruit current or former employees of foreign governments.
This year, a Chinese student was sentenced to a year in prison for photographing an American defense intelligence installation near Key West, Fla., in September 2018. 

The student, Zhao Qianli, walked to where the fence circling the base ended at the ocean, then stepped around the fence and onto the beach. 

From there, he walked onto the base and took photographs, including of an area with satellite dishes and antennae.
When he was arrested, Zhao spoke in broken English and, like the officials stopped on the Virginia base, claimed he was lost.
Chinese have been caught not just wandering on to government installations but also improperly entering university laboratories and even crossing farmland to pilfer specially bred seeds.
In 2016, a Chines, Mo Hailong, pleaded guilty to trying to steal corn seeds from American agribusiness firms and give them to a Chinese company. 

Before he was caught, Mo successfully stole seeds developed by the American companies and sent them back to China, according to court records. 

He was sentenced to three years in prison.
The F.B.I. and the National Institutes of Health are trying to root out Chinese scientists in the United States who are stealing biomedical research for China. 

The F.B.I. has also warned research institutions about risks posed by Chinese students and scholars.

Last month, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former C.I.A. officer, was sentenced to 19 years in prison, one of several former American intelligence officials sentenced this year for spying for Beijing.
His work with Chinese intelligence coincided with the demolition of the C.I.A.’s network of informants in China — one of the biggest counterintelligence coups against the United States in decades. 

From 2010 to 2012, Chinese officers killed at least a dozen informants and imprisoned others. 

One man and his pregnant wife were shot in 2011 in a ministry’s courtyard, and the execution was shown on closed-circuit television, according to a new book on Chinese espionage.
Many in the C.I.A. feared China had a mole in the agency, and some officers suspected Lee, though prosecutors did not tie him to the network’s collapse.
For three decades, China did have a mole in the C.I.A., Larry Wu-Tai Chin, considered among the most successful enemy agents to have penetrated the United States. 

He was arrested in 1985 and convicted the next year, then suffocated himself with a trash bag in his jail cell.

U.S. House Approves Uighur Bill Demanding Sanctions On Senior Chinese Officials

The bill requires the U.S. president to condemn abuses against Muslims and call for the closure of concentration camps in the northwestern colony of East Turkestan.

Reuters


WASHINGTON -- The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a bill that would require the Trump administration to toughen its response to China’s crackdown on its Muslim minority, demanding sanctions on senior Chinese officials and export bans.
The Uighur Act of 2019 is a stronger version of a bill that angered Beijing when it passed the Senate in September.

It calls on President Donald Trump to impose sanctions for the first time on a member of China’s powerful politburo, even as he seeks a trade deal with Beijing.

The bill, passed 407 to 1 in the House, requires the U.S. president to condemn abuses against Muslims and call for the closure of concentration camps in the northwestern colony of East Turkestan.
It calls for sanctions against senior Chinese officials who are responsible and specifically names East Turkestan Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, who, as a politburo member, is in the upper echelons of China’s leadership.

The revised bill still has to be approved by the Senate before being sent to President Trump. 

The White House has yet to say whether Trump would sign or veto the bill, which contains a provision allowing the president to waive sanctions if he determines this to be in the national interest.
The White House and the Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The bill comes days after President Trump signed into law congressional legislation supporting anti-government protesters in Hong Kong.
China responded to that on Monday by saying U.S. military ships and aircraft would not be allowed to visit Hong Kong, and announced sanctions against several U.S. non-government organizations.
Analysts say China’s reaction to passage of the Uighur bill could be stronger, though some doubted it would go so far as imposing visa bans on the likes of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has called China’s treatment of Uighurs “the stain of the century”.

“MODERN-DAY CONCENTRATION CAMPS”
Republican Congressman Chris Smith called China’s actions in “modern-day concentration camps” in East Turkestan “audaciously repressive,” involving “mass internment of millions on a scale not seen since the Holocaust.”

“We cannot be silent. We must demand an end to these barbaric practices,” Smith said, adding that Chinese officials must be held accountable for “crimes against humanity.”

Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi called China’s treatment of the Uighurs “an outrage to the collective conscience of the world.”
“America is watching,” she said.
Chris Johnson, a China expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said passage of the bill could lead to a further blurring of lines between the trade issue and the broader deteriorating Sino-U.S. relationship, which China in the past has tended to keep separate.
“I think there’s a sort of piling on factor here that the Chinese are concerned about,” he said.
President Trump said on Monday the Hong Kong legislation did not make trade negotiations with China easier, but he still believed Beijing wanted a deal.
However, on Tuesday, he said an agreement might have to wait until after the U.S. presidential election in November 2020.
The House bill requires the president to submit to Congress within 120 days a list of officials responsible for the abuses and to impose sanctions on them under the Global Magnitsky Act, which provides for visa bans and asset freezes.
Democratic lawmaker Brad Sherman said it was “long past the point when this should have been done,” adding: “It should not be linked to ongoing negotiations on trade or any other issues.”
The bill also requires the secretary of state to submit a report on abuses in East Turkestan, to include assessments of the numbers held in re-education and forced labor camps. 

United Nations experts and activists say at least 1 million Uighurs and members of other largely Muslim minority groups have been detained in the camps.
It also effectively bans the export to China of items that can be used for surveillance of individuals, including facial and voice-recognition technology.

Supreme Tech Quisling

Twitter Helps Beijing Push Agenda Abroad Despite Ban in China

• Twitter employees train Chinese officials to amplify message
• Push persists despite recent ban on ads from Chinese state media

By Shelly Banjo and Sarah Frier


Twitter Inc. removed hundreds of accounts linked to the Chinese government this week meant to undermine the legitimacy of Hong Kong protests. 

It also said it would no longer allow state media to purchase ads on its platform.
What Twitter didn’t mention in its series of blog posts this week was the increasing number of Chinese officials, diplomats, media, and government agencies using the social media service to push Beijing’s political agenda abroad. 

Twitter employees actually help these Chinese get their messages across, a practice that hasn’t been previously reported. 

The company provides Chinese officials with support, like verifying their accounts and training them on how to amplify messages, including with the use of hashtags.
This is despite a ban on Twitter in China, which means most people on the mainland can’t use the service or see opposing views from abroad. 

Still, in the last few days, an account belonging to the Chinese ambassador to Panama took to Twitter to share videos painting Hong Kong protesters as vigilantes. 

He also responded to Panamanian users’ tweets about the demonstrations, which began in opposition to a bill allowing extraditions to China.
China’s ambassador to the U.S. tweeted that “radical protesters” were eroding the rule of law embraced by the #silentmajority of Hong Kongers. 

The Chinese Mission to the United Nations’ Twitter account asked protesters to “stop the violence, for a better #Hong Kong,” while social media accounts of Chinese embassies in Manila, India and the Maldives shared articles from China’s state media blaming Westerners for disrupting the city. “Separatists in Hong Kong kept in close contact with foreign elements,” one story says above a photo of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.
“We know China is adept at controlling domestic information, but now they are trying to use Western platforms like Twitter to control the narrative on the international stage,” said Jacob Wallis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre.
It’s unclear if any of these diplomats were set up on the service by Twitter, but the state-backed attempt to discredit Hong Kong protesters continues to reach millions of global Twitter users. 

In many cases, the Chinese officials are promoting views similar to those in 936 accounts Twitter banned on Monday.
The practice of supporting Chinese officials who use Twitter to spread the Communist Party agenda highlights how difficult it is for the social media company to balance its commitment to root out disinformation and allow the expression of varying opinions. 

It also raises concerns around why Twitter is helping Beijing make its case to a global audience when the service is banned in China, where dissenting voices are prohibited and officials sometimes detain users accessing the platform through virtual private networks.
Twitter’s recent effort to curtail China’s government-directed misinformation campaigns, which provoked outrage from state media, seems at odds with continuing to welcome pro-Beijing accounts that attack Hong Kong protesters, said Wallis.
“There’s a clear tension for Twitter here having seen that Beijing is willing to use the platform in deceptive and manipulative ways, whilst desiring to use the platform for state diplomacy,” Wallis said.
The tweets are part of a broader campaign by China to reshape the narrative over Hong Kong, particularly in Western nations more sympathetic to the democratic aspirations of protesters. 

China this week also sent a 43-page letter to senior editors at foreign news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and Bloomberg.
Twitter says Chinese officials and politicians deserve a voice in the public discourse, as long as they follow its rules and policies. 

The company has used the same argument to defend hosting tweets by U.S. President Donald Trump, which some users have questioned. 

Twitter has said it aims to “advance global, public conversation” and that public figures “play a critical role in that conversation because of their out-sized impact on our society,“ in a blog post last year.
On Monday, Twitter said in a blog post that it would block more than 900 accounts because they appeared to be part of a “coordinated state-backed operation” to “sow political discord in Hong Kong.” 

The accounts accessed Twitter from unblocked IP addresses within mainland China, it said, suggesting the state condoned their activities. 

Twitter also said it would stop accepting advertising from state-controlled media: “Any affected accounts will be free to continue to use Twitter to engage in public conversation, just not our advertising products.”
Twitter’s embrace of Chinese officials on the platform also highlights how some American tech companies try to make inroads in the enormous market, despite government restrictions on their services. 

Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg, for example, has repeatedly expressed a desire to enter China. 

Twitter oversees the China business from offices in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Like Google, Facebook and other sites blocked in China, Twitter sells advertising to Chinese companies like Huawei Technologies Co. and Xiaomi Corp. that are trying to reach overseas users. Before Twitter’s policy change this week, it had also sold ad space to Chinese state media companies that used them to push the narrative that Hong Kong protests were orchestrated by foreign forces and angry mobs unrepresentative of the city’s majority.
Facebook said it has trained Chinese state media entities to use its services, but declined to comment on whether it also works with government officials. 

“We provide a standard set of guidance and best practice training to groups around the world including governments, political parties, media outlets, and non-profits so they can manage their Facebook Pages,” the company said in a statement, noting that their guidance is publicly available online.
YouTube, part of Alphabet Inc., doesn’t have a specific policy that bars state-funded media, but the company’s ad policies require government-funded channels to be labeled as such. 

This week, state media including the Global Times published videos about the Hong Kong demonstrations, including an interview with a police officer who said he was “critically injured by violent protesters.” 

The company didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the matter.
Both Twitter and Facebook have established programs to make sure public figures around the world sign up for their sites and understand how to use them effectively. 

The idea is that people who have a following — athletes, actors or singers — will create interest for their other users in the website. 

For years, the work has extended to politics, with the social networks signing up and training political figures. 

For example, Facebook has embedded staff with or trained Trump; Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, known for encouraging extrajudicial killings; and Germany’s anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party (AfD) in how to most effectively use the platform, Bloomberg News has reported.
Twitter and Facebook have implemented terms of service that ban certain practices, including bot accounts that appear to be real people and promote misinformation. 

But government officials and state media still have wide latitude to say what they want.
“If Trump is going to use Twitter to deliver his message to the Chinese government, then it makes perfect sense China should be using this medium to send signals back,” said Samm Sacks, cybersecurity policy and China digital economy fellow at think tank New America. 

“But then we get into this coordinated state misinformation domain and it raises problematic questions around what is propaganda and what is misinformation.”

Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act

President Trump Signs Law Punishing Chinese Officials Who Restrict Access to Tibet

By Edward Wong

A security camera monitored visitors to the Potala Palace in Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet colony. The Chinese government puts tight restrictions on travel to Tibetan areas, where discontent with Beijing’s rule is widespread.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has enacted a law that requires the State Department to punish Chinese officials who bar American officials, journalists and other citizens from going freely to Tibetan areas in China’s far west.
By some measures, those areas, though sparsely populated, make up one-quarter of China’s territory, and they have been the site of protests and riots against Chinese rule for decades. 

Because of the delicate political situation, the Tibetan plateau has long been under careful watch by central and local security officials.
Chinese security agencies make it difficult for foreigners to travel in most of the areas, and those restrictions have gotten tougher since widespread protests took place in 2012.
The government and the ruling Communist Party ban foreign diplomats and journalists from going to central Tibet, called the Tibet Autonomous Region, without getting official permission and going on carefully organized propaganda tours. 

It has been eight years since The New York Times was allowed to go on one of those trips, which are run by the Foreign Ministry.
Ordinary foreign tourists who want to visit central Tibet, which includes the capital city of Lhasa, must join a tour group, often with people of the same nationality.

The new American law cites Larung Gar, a sprawling Buddhist institution in Sichuan Province, as a site that Chinese officials have kept foreigners from seeing. The homes of many monks and nuns there have been demolished in recent years.

The new American law, enacted on Wednesday and called the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act, says the secretary of state, who is now Mike Pompeo, must within 90 days give Congress a report that lays out the level of access to Tibetan areas that Chinese officials grant Americans.
The secretary is then supposed to determine which Chinese officials are responsible for placing limits on foreigners traveling to Tibet and bar them from getting visas to the United States or revoke any active visas they have. 

The secretary must make this assessment annually for five years.
The goal of the law is to force Chinese officials to relent on the limits they impose on travel to Tibetan areas.
“For too long, China has covered up their human rights violations in Tibet by restricting travel,” Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a written statement. 

“But actions have consequences, and today, we are one step closer to holding the Chinese officials who implement these restrictions accountable.”
Matteo Mecacci, president of the International Campaign for Tibet, an advocacy group based in Washington, said President Trump’s enactment of the law “has blazed a path for other countries to follow.”
China is unlikely to change its travel limits, despite the law.
The Trump administration has taken steps against China on a wide range of issues, most notably trade. 

On Thursday, the Justice Department indicted two Chinese men on charges of hacking corporate networks and downloading troves of business data.

Buddhist nuns at Larung Gar in 2016. Tibetans across the plateau are concerned about the dilution of their culture.

American officials recently lured a Chinese man accused of being a spy to Belgium and had him arrested there. 

The United States has also had Canada arrest a top executive of Huawei, the giant technology company, as she was passing through Vancouver. 

The United States is seeking her extradition on charges that she tricked banks into conducting transactions that violated United States sanctions on Iran.
The bipartisan support for the Tibet legislation and its easy passage into law reflect the willingness of American officials to take a hard stand against China. 

The new law cites Larung Gar, an enormous Buddhist institution in Sichuan Province, as an example of a Tibetan area that Chinese officials have kept foreigners from seeing in recent years. 

That is because officials have been demolishing the homes of many monks and nuns there.
Across the plateau, Tibetans are anxious about the dilution of their culture, an issue that the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader living in exile, has raised repeatedly, calling it “cultural genocide.”
This year, a Chinese court sentenced Tashi Wangchuk, an advocate of Tibetan language education, to five years in prison, despite widespread international criticism of his arrest. 

He had appeared in a Times video talking about the need for more teaching of Tibetan in schools, and he was arrested even though he has said he does not advocate for an independent Tibet.
Since 2009, at least 155 Tibetans have self-immolated in acts of protest against Chinese rule.

Chinazism

U.S. Weighs Sanctions Against Chinese Officials Over Muslim Detention Camps

By Edward Wong

The Id Kah mosque in China’s East Turkestan colony. The mass detentions in East Turkestan are the worst collective human rights abuse in China in decades.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering sanctions against Chinese senior officials and companies to punish Beijing’s detention of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uighurs and other minority Muslims in large internment camps, according to current and former American officials.
The economic penalties would be one of the first times the Trump administration has taken action against China because of human rights violations. 

United States officials are also seeking to limit American sales of surveillance technology that Chinese security agencies and companies are using to monitor Uighurs throughout northwest China.
Discussions to rebuke China for its treatment of its minority Muslims have been underway for months among officials at the White House and the Treasury and State Departments. 

But they gained urgency two weeks ago, after members of Congress asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to impose sanctions on seven Chinese officials.
Until now, Trump has largely resisted punishing China for its human rights record, or even accusing it of widespread violations. 

If approved, the penalties would fuel an already bitter standoff with Beijing over trade and pressure on North Korea’s nuclear program.
Last month, a United Nations panel confronted Chinese diplomats in Geneva over the detentions. 

The camps for Chinese Muslims have been the target of growing international criticism and investigative reports, including by The New York Times.
Human rights advocates and legal scholars say the mass detentions in the northwest colony of East Turkestan are the worst collective human rights abuse in China in decades. 

Since taking power in 2012, Xi Jinping has steered China on a hard authoritarian course, which includes increased repression of large ethnic groups in western China, notably the Uighurs and Tibetans.
On Sunday, Human Rights Watch released a detailed report that concluded that the violations were of a “scope and scale not seen in China since the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.” 

The report, based on interviews with 58 former residents of East Turkestan, recommended that other nations impose targeted sanctions on Chinese officials, withhold visas and control exports of technology that could be used for abuses.
Any new American sanctions would be announced by the Treasury Department after governmentwide consultations, including with Congress.

Chinese Muslims in the camps are forced to attend daily classes, denounce aspects of Islam, study mainstream Chinese culture and pledge loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. 

Some detainees who have been released have described torture by security officers.

Uighurs and their supporters near the United Nations in March protested Chinese surveillance of the ethnic group throughout northwest China.

Chinese officials have labeled the process “transformation through education” or “counter-extremism education.” 

But they have not acknowledged that large groups of Muslims are being detained.
The discussions over the mass detentions in East Turkestan highlight American efforts on issues that diverge from the president’s priorities. 

Trump has rarely made statements criticizing foreign governments for human rights abuses or anti-liberal policies, and in fact has praised authoritarian leaders, including Xi.
The Trump administration has confronted China over economic issues — the two countries are in the middle of a prolonged trade war — but has said little about rampant abuses by its security forces.
“The scale of it — it’s massive,” Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said of the Muslim detention centers in an interview. 

“It involves not only intimidating people on political speech, but also a desire to strip people of their identity — ethnic identity, religious identity — on a scale that I’m not sure we’ve seen in the modern era.”
Ethnic Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking group that is mostly Sunni Muslim. 

With a population of around 11 million, Uighurs are the largest ethnic group in East Turkestan. 

Some of the desert oasis towns and villages that they consider their homeland are being emptied out as security officers force many Uighurs into large detention centers for weeks or months.
Gulchehra Hoja, a Uighur-American journalist who works for Radio Free Asia, which is financed by the United States government, said at a congressional hearing in July that two dozen of her family members in East Turkestan were missing, including her brother.
“I hope and pray for my family to be let go and released,” Ms. Hoja said. 

“But I know even if that happens, they will still live under constant threat.”
A Chinese law student in Canada, Shawn Zhang, has compiled satellite images that show the scale of some of the detention centers.
In their demand last month, Mr. Rubio and other lawmakers urged officials at the State and Treasury Departments to impose sanctions on Chinese companies that have profited from building the camps or the regionwide surveillance system, which includes the collection of biometric and DNA data. They singled out Hikvision and Dahua Technology for the surveillance.
Mr. Rubio said the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, of which he is a chairman, will also ask the Commerce Department to prevent American companies from selling technology to China that could contribute to the surveillance and tracking.
Congressional lawmakers singled out Chen Quanguo, who became party chief of East Turkestan in 2016, for sanctions among seven Chinese officials.

For many years, Chinese officials have talked about the need to suppress what they call "terrorism", separatism and religious extremism in East Turkestan. 

In 2009, ethnic violence began soaring in the region. 

Security forces carried out mass repression in response, but large-scale construction of the camps, which now hold as many as one million people, did not begin until the arrival of Chen Quanguo, who became party chief of East Turkestan in August 2016, after a stint in the Tibet Autonomous Region.
The congressional demand, outlined in an Aug. 28 letter, singles out Mr. Chen among the seven Chinese officials who would be sanctioned.
In Washington, officials grappling with the plight of the Uighurs and other Chinese Muslims are doing so in the shadow of the mass murders, rapes and forced displacement of Rohingya Muslims by Burmese military forces that began in Myanmar in August 2017. 

More than 700,000 Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh and live in squalid camps.
American officials see the actions of the Chinese government as another form of the genocide that occurred in Myanmar, according to people with knowledge of the continuing discussions.
Sam Brownback, the State Department’s ambassador at large for international religious freedom and former governor of Kansas, supports taking a hard line against the Chinese government on the issue of East Turkestan, they said. 

Mr. Brownback declined to be interviewed.
In April, Laura Stone, an acting deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told reporters on a visit to Beijing that the United States could impose sanctions on Chinese officials involved in the East Turkestan abuses under the Global Magnitsky Act. 

The law allows the American government to impose sanctions on specific foreign officials who are gross violators of human rights.
That same month, Heather Nauert, the chief spokeswoman for the State Department, called on China to release all those “unlawfully detained” after meeting in Washington with Ms. Hoja and five other ethnic Uighur journalists who work in the United States for Radio Free Asia. 

The journalists shared details of the mass detentions and of harassment of their own family members in the region.
The issue of the Uighurs was raised in July at the first international minister-level forum on global religious freedom, over which Mr. Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence presided. 

Ahead of it, Mr. Pompeo wrote an op-ed that listed the Uighurs among several groups suffering religious persecution. 

“These episodes and others like them are abhorrent,” he wrote.
In a statement to The Times, the State Department said officials “are deeply troubled by the Chinese government’s worsening crackdown” on Muslims.
“Credible reports indicate that individuals sent by Chinese authorities to detention centers since April 2017 number at least in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions,” the statement said.
The Trump administration has used an executive order tied to the Magnitsky Act once to impose sanctions on a Chinese official. 

In December, the White House announced sanctions against Gao Yan, who was a district police chief in Beijing when a human-rights activist died in detention.