China slams House’s passage of bill backing sanctions on Beijing over mass detention of Muslims

By Gerry Shih
Dec. 4, 2019 at 9:31 a.m. EST

BEIJING — The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill late Tuesday that would impose sanctions on ­senior Chinese officials involved in the country’s mass detention of its Muslim Uighur minority, ­setting up another clash between Washington and Beijing at a time of broadening disputes between the two powers.

The Uighur Act cleared the House by a vote of 407 to 1 a week after President Trump signed legislation that would impose sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials involved in human rights abuses in the protest-racked financial hub.

Nury Turkel, chair of the ­Uighur Human Rights Project ­advocacy group in Washington, called the House passage “historic” and urged Congress to reconcile the two versions of the bill this month. “The scope and scale of the crisis in the Uighur region demands urgent action in Congress to send this bill to President Trump’s desk for his signature,” he said. The Senate version passed in September.

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