- The House on Tuesday passed legislation condemning human rights abuses against Uighur Muslims in China's autonomous Xinjiang region by an overwhelming 407-1 vote.
- The bill, called The Uighur Act of 2019, also calls for sanctions against senior Chinese officials for their alleged roles in the abuse.
- The legislation now heads to the Senate for a final vote.
- The bill's passage in the House follows legislation signed by President Donald Trump last week supporting human rights in Hong Kong.
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The House on Tuesday passed bipartisan legislation condemning human rights abuses against Uighur Muslims in China's autonomous Xinjiang region. It calls for sanctions against senior Chinese officials for their roles in the abuse.
The bill, called The Uighur Act of 2019, was overwhelmingly supported by a vote of 407-1. Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky was the only one who voted against the measure.
The legislation, which is a tougher version of a bill passed in September in the Senate, now heads back to the Senate for another vote.
China has been accused of running detention centers in the autonomous western region of Xinjiang. Interviews with people who were held in the camps reveal allegations of beatings and food deprivation, as well as medical experimentation on prisoners.
China has acknowledged the existence of some "reeducation camps" but repeatedly denied any reports of abuse at its facilities.
The region has a population of about 10 million citizens, many of whom are Uighur or other ethnic minorities, and in May, Assistant Secretary of US Defense Randall Schriver said "at least a million but likely closer to 3 million citizens" were detained in these facilities.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination last year called on China to "halt the practice of detaining individuals who have not been lawfully charged, tried, and convicted for a criminal offense in any extra-legal detention center." The committee also called out China's practice of racial and ethnic profiling and heavy-handed restrictions that disproportionately target the Uighur community.
Satellite images reviewed by the Washington-based East Turkistan National Awakening Movement earlier this month identified at least 465 detention centers, labor camps, and suspected prisons in Xinjiang.
And a recent leak of classified Chinese government documents known as the "China Cables" laid out a manual for exactly how the detention centers were to operate, from preventing escape by double locking all the doors to using a "points system" based on behavior that is linked "directly to rewards, punishments, and family visits."
The Uighur bill follows legislation passed by President Donald Trump last week supporting human rights in Hong Kong.
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