Calon, based in Los Angeles, reported on human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in China.
China has imposed sanctions on a US research firm that monitors human rights in northwestern Xinjiang.
China announced late Tuesday that Calon, a Los Angeles-based research and data analysis company, and two of its chief analysts were banned from entering the country. The company has reported extensively on allegations that the Chinese government commits human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.
In a statement released by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, the two banned analysts were named Edmund Xu, head of the investigation department, and Nicole Morganet, a human rights analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Research.
Assets and assets owned by Chinese companies and individuals will be frozen. Chinese organizations and individuals are prohibited from doing business with or otherwise collaborating with us.
The statement said the sanctions were in retaliation for Mr. Kalon’s contributions to a U.S. government report on human rights in Xinjiang.
Uyghurs and other indigenous peoples of the region share religious, linguistic, and cultural ties with other peoples scattered throughout Central Asia, and have struggled to survive the coercive rule of the Chinese Communist Party and their resistance to the Chinese majority. They have long resented attempts to assimilate them into their ethnic groups.
“The Chinese government is engaged in a concerted effort to industrialize the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), and as a result, more companies are establishing manufacturing businesses in the region,” Morganet wrote in a June 2022 paper. “
“This centrally controlled industrial policy is an important tool in the government’s efforts to forcibly assimilate Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic groups through a system of forced labor regimes,” she added.
Such reports are obtained from a wide range of sources, including independent media, non-governmental organizations and groups, which may receive commercial and government grants or other external funding.
tough situation
China has long denied allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and its extensive network of prison-like facilities through which hundreds of thousands of Muslims pass through is designed to weed out violent extremist tendencies and improve job skills. He claimed that his sole purpose was to teach.
Former prisoners have described harsh conditions imposed without legal process, denounced their culture and demanded daily praise of President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party.
China says all camps are now closed, but many former prisoners are reportedly serving long prison sentences elsewhere. Entry into the region by journalists, diplomats and others is strictly restricted, and movement outside the region by Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities is strictly regulated.
“With the publication of the report, the United States has again spread false stories about Xinjiang and illegally sanctioned Chinese officials and companies for so-called human rights issues,” Mao said.
“If the United States refuses to change its policy, China will not hesitate and respond in the same way,” Mao Zedong reportedly told reporters at a previous press conference.
The United States has imposed visa suspensions and wide-ranging sanctions on dozens of officials from China and the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong, including a former defense minister who disappeared under circumstances that China has yet to explain. include.
China’s foreign minister was also replaced this year, with no word on his fate after that, leaving party leader and lifetime head of state Xi to be questioned by officials who suspect him of collaborating with foreign governments or by China’s most authoritarian leader. There is growing speculation that the government is carrying out a purge of officials suspected of being insufficiently loyal to the government. Since Mao Zedong.
It was not immediately clear how much, if any, ties Mr. Xu and Mr. Morganet had to the U.S. government.