President Joe Biden yesterday signed into law a piece of legislation that bans imports from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) over concerns regarding forced labour and imposes sanctions on foreign individuals responsible for forced labour in the region, the White House said. Some goods like cotton are designated ‘high priority’ for enforcement action.

The bill was cleared by the US Congress this month after lawmakers reached a compromise between versions of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The United States assumes all goods from Xinjiang—where Beijing has allegedly established detention camps for Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities—are made with forced labour. It bars imports unless it can be proven otherwise. China denies abuses in Xinjiang, a major cotton producer that also supplies much of the world’s materials for solar panels.

President Joe Biden yesterday signed into law a piece of legislation that bans imports from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region over concerns regarding forced labour and imposes sanctions on foreign individuals responsible for forced labour in the region,the White House said. Some goods like cotton are designated ‘high priority’ for enforcement action.

The Chinese embassy in the United States said the act “ignores the truth and maliciously slanders the human rights situation in Xinjiang”.

China’s ministry of foreign affairs, in a statement, expressed its ‘strong indignation and resolute opposition’ to the legislation. “Claims of ‘forced labor’ and ‘genocide’ in Xinjiang are nothing but vicious lies hyped up by anti-China forces,” the statement said.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)