UHRP Urges Biden Administration to Impose Investment Bans on Hikvision and Dahua
For immediate release
August 14, 2023, 12:00 p.m. EDT
Contact: Louisa Greve, +1 (571) 882-4825, Peter Irwin, +1 (646) 906-7722
The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) urges the Biden administration to impose a comprehensive investment ban on Chinese surveillance companies actively supporting atrocities in the Uyghur region, following the August 9 Executive Order banning investment in certain Chinese technology industries.
“It’s incomprehensible to me that Americans are still free to invest in companies that have so brazenly facilitated mass internment and genocide in East Turkistan,” said UHRP Executive Director, Omer Kanat. “No American should be allowed to directly support Chinese companies that have quite literally implemented Chinese government policies to identify, track, monitor, and control an entire population based on their ethnicity,” he continued.
Since 2021, 11 Chinese surveillance companies have been placed under an investment ban for their role in the human rights atrocities against Uyghurs, imposed by President Biden’s Executive Order of June 2021. The list, however, only includes companies that are publicly traded. UHRP calls on the US and other governments to implement outbound investment restrictions to include private equity and venture capital, to include non-publicly traded companies such as Hikvision and Dahua.
Regardless of the investment vehicle, Americans should not be permitted to provide working capital, or derive profits from, any companies providing essential systems for the government to carry out atrocities in the Uyghur region, which the U.S. government has determined meets the threshold of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Targeted investment bans on Chinese companies like Hikvision and Dahua are consistent with U.S. policy, and would send a message to the international community that the U.S. is determined to apply available tools to end the atrocities.
Read more:
UHRP Welcomes New Sanctions on Chinese DNA Company BGI for Targeting Uyghurs, March 7, 202
UHRP Applauds New Bill on Magnitsky Sanctions for Chinese Tech Companies Enabling Genocide: Hikvision, Dahua, Tiandy and BGI, December 19, 2022
UHRP Testimony: Ending “Business as Usual” to Combat the Genocide of the Uyghurs: UHRP Testimony Before USCIRF, December 14, 2022
UHRP Welcomes Secondary Sanctions Bill for Those Doing Business with Genocide Perpetrators, August 3, 2022
UHRP Joins Allies Urging US Government to Immediately Impose Magnitsky Sanctions on CCP Officials Implicated by Xinjiang Police Files, August 10, 2022
UHRP Applauds Continued Action by Executive Branch on Uyghur Human Rights Crisis, May 27, 2020
Uyghur Human Rights Project applauds U.S. sanctions against Chinese entities and officials complicit in human rights violations, October 8, 2019