Biden administration Over 2 dozen added A Chinese company was added to a forced labor blacklist on Friday, in the latest effort to combat exploitation of China's Uyghur population.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has identified 29 companies in Xinjiang that are allegedly using forced labor from Uyghurs to produce products for industries ranging from agriculture and pharmaceuticals to biosciences.
President Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLP) in 2021, a bill aimed at punishing China's human rights abuses against regional ethnic and religious minorities.
“Forced labor is a violation of fundamental human rights,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. “The Department of Homeland Security will aggressively enforce the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, stop products made with forced labor from entering our country, investigate and expose more than 100 bad actors, and protect American companies from We have helped ensure that people do not profit inadvertently from this modern form of slavery.”
“Together with partners in government, industry, and civil society, the United States is moving toward ending forced labor while supporting economic equity, protecting human rights, and holding perpetrators accountable.” added.
Mayorkas also said the agency has identified new measures to prevent the importation of products produced as byproducts of forced labor, amid feedback on the administration's swift approach to stopping products from entering the United States. I shared that there is.
“There are conflicting arguments about what we're doing,” Mayorkas said in an interview with the newspaper on Friday. “I've certainly heard opinions that it's moving too fast,” he said. wall street journal.
“It can be very difficult to understand the details of a supply chain, but we are making incredible strides in our investigative capabilities and are looking to increasingly leverage technology to help us do that. '' he told the media.
DHS announced additional bans on three companies in late September and two more in early October.
