#US bans imports of goods produced using slavery in China

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A large cotton picker in Shuanghe City, Xinjiang, China.
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The Trump administration is banning imports of clothing, certain cotton products and computer parts from a region of China where more than a million Muslim-minority Uighurs are being held in detention camps because of concerns about forced labor, according to reports.

Customs and Border Protection on Monday issued “Withhold Release Orders” halting imports from companies that make apparel, cotton and linen fabrics, hair products and computer parts in the Xinjiang region.

It also froze imports from a manufacturing facility in a “re-education” center that serves as a concentration camp where Uighurs are forced to work.

“These are not the first WROs the U.S. has issued on Chinese goods, and I can tell you I’m absolutely confident they’re not going to be the last,” CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan said Monday, Politico reported.

Acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli said the Trump administration is weighing a wider ban and rejected Chinese Communist Party claims that the facility is a “vocational” center.

“It is a concentration camp, a place where religious and ethnic minorities are subject to abuse and forced to work in heinous conditions with no recourse and no freedom,” Cuccinelli said. “This is modern day slavery.”

At the same time, the European Union called for independent observers to be allowed to visit the region where up to 1.8 million Uighurs are being held to examine how they are being treated, according to Radio Free Asia.

“We reiterated our concerns over China’s treatment of minorities in Xinjiang and Tibet, and the treatment of human rights defenders and journalists,” EU’s Council President Charles Michel said in a statement about a video conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Michel also said they pressed Xi about releasing Gui Minhai, a Swedish citizen, and Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Korvig.

Gui was sentenced to 10 years in prison for “illegally providing intelligence overseas” in February after he disappeared in 2015 from his home in Thailand.

Spavor and Korvig have been held in China since 2018 on espionage charges, supposedly in retaliation for the Canadian government’s arrest of a high-ranking official with Chinese tech company Huawei.

Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Monday he will introduce legislation to revoke China’s “most favored nation” trade status with the US while taking a shot at Joe Biden, who voted for the “US-China Relations Act” in 2000 when he was in the Senate.

“This week is the 20th anniversary of Joe Biden voting to give permanent MFN status to China. Just think about that. MFN status to a communist country,” Cotton said Monday on “Fox & Friends.”

“Over the last 20 years, that decision supercharged the loss of American manufacturing jobs. And Joe Biden just defended it last week. That’s why I’m introducing legislation this week that would repeal permanent MFN status and require the president and Congress to decide on it annually,” he said.

Disney has also been hit with backlash for filming scenes of its live-action remake of “Mulan” in the Xinjiang region, and a bipartisan group of US lawmakers want to know if it was aware of any human rights violations at the locations.

“Disney’s apparent cooperation with officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) who are most responsible for committing atrocities — or for covering up those crimes — is profoundly disturbing,” lawmakers wrote in their letter to Disney CEO Bob Chapek.

With Post wires