The evidence of widespread detention and abuse of Uyghurs was confirmed for the world to see on May 24, when the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation released the Xinjiang Police Files.
They contained thousands of images of Uyghurs detained by XUAR authorities and held in internment camps, as well as detailed information about the security and operations of the camps, and incriminating speeches of Chinese Communist Party officials.
“The unprecedented materials were obtained from the largest and most significant leak of internal documents from Xinjiang police networks, consisting of tens of thousands of documents,” according to Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. “The files were authenticated and analyzed by Dr. Adrian Zenz and a consortium of major global media outlets including the BBC, USA Today, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and El Pais.
"For the first time, the Xinjiang Police Files showed the world the faces of thousands of innocent Uyghurs, including women and children as young as 15 years old, who are being detained in brutal conditions because of their religion and ethnicity.”
On Aug. 10, Victims of Communism and 56 allied organizations calling for the sanctioning of CCP officials implicated in the Xinjiang police files, urging Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen to impose sanctions against the people and organizations involved in this oppressive activity.
“We, the 56 undersigned organizations dedicated to human rights in China and to the plight of persecuted ethno-religious groups in the Uyghur Region, urge you to sanction all Chinese officials responsible for the genocide in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), also known as East Turkistan. Such sanctions are required by law under Section 6 of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 (P.L.116-145),” the Victims of Communism stated.
A State Department spokesperson who declined to provide his name offered these comments to State Newswire: “Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners face detention, harassment, and reported torture and abuse each year for simply peacefully practicing their beliefs,” he said. “We call on the PRC government to immediately cease its campaign against Falun Gong practitioners, release those imprisoned due to their beliefs, and address the whereabouts of missing practitioners.”
The Treasury Department did not respond to repeated attempts to obtain comments.
On June 9, the European Parliament passed by a majority resolution which urged “Member States and the Vice-President of the Commission/High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy to immediately enact additional sanctions targeting high-ranking Chinese officials.”
The officials implicated in the Xianjiang Police Files include Zhao Kezhi of the Minister of Public Security in Beijing; Wang Yang, head of the Central Xinjiang Work Coordination Small Group; Guo Shengkun, head of China’s Political and Legal Affairs Commission; and Hu Lianhe, deputy director of the Office of the Central Committee
Since the release of the files, only one government official, former XUAR Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, has been sanctioned by the United States.
On July 9, 2020, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned one Chinese government entity and four current or former government officials in connection with serious rights abuses against ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
Chen Quanguo and Zhu Hailun, a former deputy party secretary of the XUAR, were named and the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau (XPSB), as well as the current Director and Communist Party Secretary of the XPSB, Wang Mingshan, and the former Party Secretary of the XPSB, Huo Liujun also were designated for their connection to serious human rights abuse against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, which reportedly include mass arbitrary detention and severe physical abuse, among other serious abuses targeting Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim population indigenous to Xinjiang, and other ethnic minorities in the region.
“The United States is committed to using the full breadth of its financial powers to hold human rights abusers accountable in Xinjiang and across the world,” Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said in 2020.
