U.S Passes Bill Banning Products From Xingjian Region

The United States has passed a bill banning all the products manufactured from Xingjian region.

The latest efforts by the US are to punish China for the forced labour and genocide of Uyghurs and other minorities in the region.

Senator Marco Rubio from Florida introduced the legislation with Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

They said in a statement after the passage of the bill that the message to Beijing “and any international company that profits from forced labour in Xinjiang is clear: no more.”

It added that the US would “not turn a blind eye” to the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s “crimes against humanity,” nor “allow corporations a free pass to profit from those horrific abuses.”

Merkley noted that Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang “are being forced into labour, tortured, imprisoned, forcibly sterilised, and pressured to abandon their religious and cultural practices by the Chinese government.”

“No American corporation should profit from these abuses,” Merkley said. “No American consumers should be inadvertently purchasing products from slave labour”.

Xinjiang products are deeply integrated into lucrative global supply chains, and Nike and Coca-Cola were among the major companies to have lobbied against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, reported Axios.