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The United States has imposed restrictions on visas on current and ancient Thai officials who were involved in the forced repatriation of Uighur Muslims, as part of a new policy aimed at supporting the groups subject to torture in China.
Politics will target foreign officials who are accomplices of efforts to force ethnic or religious minorities to force persecution for China.
“We are committed to combating China’s efforts to put pressure on governments to force ouïghours and other groups in China, where they are subject to torture and forced disappearances,” said Marco Rubio, Secretary of State.
“In the light of acts of long -standing genocide of China and crimes against humanity committed against Uighurs, we call on governments of the whole world not to return from Uighurs and other groups to China.”
Rubio said the action against the current and former anonymous Thai officials were an answer to their involvement to force 40 Uighurs to return to China at the end of February. Thailand is an ally of the United States Defense Treaty, but the country is nervous at the idea of ​​annoying China, which is much more important for the Southeast Asian Nation from a commercial perspective.
The State Department did not specify what visa restrictions would imply, but these measures generally refer to the refusal of visas to enter the United States. Rubio said the measures could also apply to family members of all officials who facilitate repatriation.
Uings are a Turkish ethnic minority in the northwest Chinese region of Xinjiang. In 2022, the High Commissioner of the United Nations Human Rights accused Beijing of having committed “serious human rights violations” in the way he treated Uighors and other Muslim ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang.
China has over time that more than 1 minute ouïghours in Xinjiang detention camps, arousing criticism from many countries in the world. Beijing has repeatedly denied that he has persecuted Uighurs.
THE policy is an early indication of how President Donald Trump will react human rights violations involving China. At the end of his first mandate, the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, accused Beijing of having committed a genocide. His successor in the administration of Joe Biden, Antoine flashesThen repeated the accusation.
Rubio was one of the noisiest criticisms in China and his human rights file when he served in the United States Senate, alongside Mike Waltz, a former green beret of the army and a member of the Florida Congress who is now a national security advisor.
Many experts in China think that Trump wants to reach a kind of vast agreement with Beijing that would involve trade and other problems. One thing they watch over how the president and his officials speak of alleged human rights violations in China given the possible implications for any wider negotiation with President Xi Jinping.
