04/21/2021 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 04/22/2021 09:01
WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today issued the following statement after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced two of his initiatives in the Strategic Competition Act to hold accountable Chinese officials who are responsible for the genocide of the Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang:
'The United States will not remain silent as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues its ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and the CCP officials responsible for these atrocities will no longer enjoy either anonymity or immunity. I am grateful for the shared urgency of my colleagues for confronting these atrocities, including the CCP's brutal and criminal campaign of forced abortions and sterilizations.'
The final bill, passed by the Committee, included language requiring sanctions against Chinese officials who have committed systematic rape or forced abortions, sterilizations, or contraceptive implantation as part of the genocide. The language incorporates Sen. Cruz's Sanctioning and Highlighting Authoritarian Medicine and Eugenics (SHAME) Act. The bill also included an amendment authored by Sen. Cruz that states, unambiguously, which Congress has determined that the Chinese Communist Party and the government of China are engaged in an ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang, and that their tactics include imprisonment, torture, rape, and coercive birth prevention policies.
According to a recent report featuring an exiled Chinese physician, the Chinese Communist Party is carrying out widespread forced sterilizations on Uyghur women in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), with up to 80 surgeries a day. Sen. Cruz has long fought to shine a light on the CCP's human rights atrocities against the Uyghurs. In 2019, Sen. Cruz led a successful push to secure the blacklisting of companies that the CCP uses in its oppression of minorities such as the Uyghurs, including by introducing the TIANANMEN Act.
Other amendments and language advancing Sen. Cruz's policy initiatives that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced today:
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