Several rights advocates welcomed the news from Brussels, urging the EU to implement the ban and add Xinjiang region to its forced labor risk database.
Liujun Huo, the former Party Secretary of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau, was sanctioned in 2020. He was involved in the CCP’s surveillance and mass detention of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.
Both are accused of using forced labor from China's far-west region of Xinjiang. The ban was carried out under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The law addresses human rights abuses in Xinjiang. It was signed by President Biden in 2021.
According to an Epoch Times analysis of data published by China’s National Bureau of Statistics, in the past three years, more than 90 percent of cotton produced in China came from Xinjiang.
According to human rights experts, Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang region have been subjected to mass detention, with an estimated 1 million people placed in a sprawling network of internment camps and other detention facilities in the Xinjiang region.
The heavy snowfall over the weekend also affected hundreds of hikers in other parts of western China, including Xinjiang, Qinghai and Gansu. At least one died, due to a combination of hypothermia and acute mountain sickness.
"Given concerns regarding the human rights abuses occurring in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, FDA has publicly reiterated that (legislation) requires clinical trials to obtain the legally effective, informed consent of human subjects," she wrote
Under UFLPA, all goods that come wholly or partly from Xinjiang or are made by a company on its Entity List are presumed to have been produced using forced labour and is banned.
After Abbas spoke in public about the abuses in Xinjiang in 2018, her sister, Gulshan Abbas, disappeared in China and a 20-year prison term was later imposed on her in a secret trial.
The emphasis on "sinicization of religion," as highlighted by Xi during his visits to Xinjiang, underscores the broader goal of aligning all religious practices with state-sanctioned Chinese characteristics.
Under U.S. law, goods and services from China's Xinjiang region are presumed to have utilized Uyghur forced labor unless importers can prove otherwise.
Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has questioned index provider MSCI why it removed the “red flag” rating on Volkswagen initially assigned over alleged forced labor concerns in its jointly owned plant in China’s Xinjiang region.
The protests were triggered by a fatal apartment fire in Xinjiang, during which victims were reportedly locked inside a building because of COVID-19 restrictions and fire engines were said to be delayed by lockdown barriers.
"Xinjiang police and other local authorities are still buying products from DJI. Xinjiang public security departments entered into seven procurement orders with DJI that were worth nearly US$300,000 between 2019 and 2022," the report reads.
The Party’s treatment of Xinjiang “amounts to cultural genocide,” says Seytoff. In response to the recent breakout of violence, Chinese leader Xi Jinping asked the Politburo to deal with Xinjiang as quickly as possible.
The projects have become debt traps for those countries, coupled with the persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, causing backlash against China by Islamic groups in West Asia or the Middle East, Shen said.
China observers have noted that media outlets once vocal on issues like the persecution of Falun Gong and repression in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, have largely gone silent.
