On Wednesday, Democrat Senator Ron Wyden (OR) blocked a bipartisan bill that would have banned imports from communist China’s Xinjiang region — where China is committing genocide — that were made using slave labor.
“Wyden blocked a bill that would ban goods made with forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region after Senator Marco Rubio [R-FL] rejected his request to add an unrelated extension of the child tax credit,” Bloomberg News reported. “The bill has broad bipartisan support and was on track for quick final passage by unanimous consent after having cleared the House by a voice vote.”
Nike, which has lobbied Congress against the bill, is Wyden’s top financial contributor.
“I am completely sympathetic to my colleague from Florida, my colleague from Oregon, to the fight against genocide and forced labor,” Wyden claimed. “They got me at hello on their proposition. I also feel incredibly strongly, incredibly strongly about our vulnerable children and our vulnerable families that are going to be cut off from an essential lifeline unless the United States Senate acts.”
China has been committing genocide against Uyghur Muslims and using them for slave labor. As Radio Free Asia explained, China has been conducting a “mass internment campaign, as well as other state policies such as government-mandated homestays, a mass birth-prevention strategy, the forcible transfer of Uyghur children to state-run facilities, the eradication of Uyghur identity, and the selectively targeting of intellectuals and other leader as evidence of intent to destroy the ethnic group.”
According to a research report of Uyghurs who had managed to survive China’s concentration camps from Radio Free Asia, “All participants described extreme physical and psychological violence within detention settings, including deaths. The constant threat or presence of extreme violence and torture was discussed by all participants. Violence was used to extract forced confessions, to punish detainees for infractions or mistakes, and as a method of terror and control. Three participants said they had witnessed the death or fatal deterioration of fellow detainees. All participants detained in political re-education camps said they had heard of fellow detainees who had died as a result of violence or maltreatment during their confinement.”
