US sanctions CCP Party Chief of East Turkistan, highest-ranking Chinese official yet
DHARAMSALA, 10 July: The Chinese Communist regime’s Party Chief of East Turkistan has become the highest-ranking Chinese official sanctioned by the US until now over alleged human rights abuses against the Uighur Muslim minority.
Chen Quanguo, a member of China’s powerful Politburo was blacklisted by the US along with three other officials, the Reuters reported citing a senior White House official.
The report quoted that the official as declaring the blacklisting is “no joke” while briefing the reporters on Quanguo now being the highest-ranking Chinese official ever sanctioned by the US.
“Not only in terms of symbolic and reputational affect, but it does have real meaning on a person’s ability to move around the world and conduct business,” the unnamed official was quoted as saying in the report.
The sanction, the report noted was “imposed under the Global Magnitsky Act, which allows the U.S. government to target human rights violators worldwide by freezing any U.S. assets, banning U.S. travel and prohibiting Americans from doing business with them.”
Region Zhu Hailun, a former deputy party secretary and current deputy secretary of the regional legislative body the Xinjiang’s People’s Congress and Wang Mingshan, the director and Communist Party secretary of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau; and former party secretary of the bureau Huo Liujun were sanctioned along with Quanguo, the former CPC Chief of Tibet Autonomous.
The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has stated in the report that the US will now bar the trio and their immediate families, as well as other unnamed Chinese Communist Party officials, from travelling to the United States.