PUNCH
The United States unveiled trade restrictions on Tuesday on eight companies, including two Chinese firms and several from Russia, alleging human rights violations.
The China-based companies identified include Zhejiang Uniview Technologies, which US officials accuse of enabling human rights violations such as surveillance of Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups.
The other firm named by the US Commerce Department was Beijing Zhongdun Security Technology Group, which is said to develop and sell products that allow public security authorities to carry out rights violations.
The businesses were added to an “entity list,” which requires US companies to have a license before exporting to them.
“Human rights abuses are contrary to the foreign policy interests of the United States,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Alan Estevez in a statement.
Adding these companies to the entity list aims to “ensure that US technology is not used to enable human rights violations and abuses,” he added.
A spokeswoman for Beijing’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday the sanctions were an “open and fearless suppression of Chinese high-tech companies under the guise of human rights”.
“This further exposes the falsehood that the US protects human rights and the reality that it deprives the Chinese people of their development rights. Such ploys will never succeed,” Mao Ning said at a regular press briefing.
“If the United States really cares about human rights, it should first patch up its own rights debts.”
A man who answered a call to a cellphone number associated with Beijing Zhongdun on Wednesday hung up after an AFP reporter identified himself.
Calls to two numbers associated with Zhejiang Uniview went unanswered.
The US government and lawmakers in several other Western countries have taken aim at China’s treatment of the Uyghur minority in the northwestern Xinjiang region.
Rights groups have said at least one million people, mostly members of Muslim minorities, have been incarcerated in the region and face various abuses — while Beijing vehemently denies the accusations.
Among other firms targeted on Tuesday were two in Myanmar…
