US hits Chinese, N Korean firms with sanctions

The United States unveiled a raft of new rights-abuse sanctions Friday on senior officials and entities in eight countries, including a Chinese firm specializing in facial recognition technology and a giant cartoon studio in North Korea.

Timed for International Human Rights Day and supported in part by Britain and Canada, the sanctions took aim at officials accused of abetting the crackdown on anti-coup protestors in Myanmar, the oppression of Muslim Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang region and political violence in Bangladesh under the guise of a war on drugs.

"Our actions today, particularly those in partnership with the United Kingdom and Canada, send a message that democracies around the world will act against those who abuse the power of the state to inflict suffering and repression," the US Treasury Department said.

It said China's artificial intelligence company SenseTime, and two ethnic Uyghur political leaders in Xinjiang, Shohrat Zakir and Erken Tuniyaz, took part in the sweeping oppression of Uyghurs.

The sanctions and blacklisting can prevent individuals from obtaining visas to the United States, block assets under US jurisdiction, and prevent the targets from doing business with US individuals or entities -- effectively locking them out of the US banking system.

Xinjiang surveillance

Zakir was the chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China from at least 2018 to 2021, and Tuniyaz is current acting chairman.

Zakir has defended the prison camps as "education centers" that teach people Mandarin and "the true meaning of religion."

But international rights organizations have called them a central tool in the Chinese government's "genocidal" policies towards Uyghurs.

"The mass detention of Uyghurs is part of an effort by (Chinese) authorities to use detentions and data-driven surveillance to create a police state in the Xinjiang region," the Treasury said.

The Treasury said SenseTime's facial recognition programs were designed in part to be used in Xinjiang against Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities, more than one million of whom have been incarcerated in prison camps.