US blacklists 28 Chinese entities over abuses targeting Muslim minorities in Xinjiang

The Chinese firms blacklisted by the US included video surveillance company Hikvision, as well as artificial intelligence companies Megvii Technology and SenseTime.

The US Commerce Department announced Monday it is blacklisting 28 Chinese entities that it says are implicated in rights violations and abuses targeting Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region.

In this file photo, visitors pass by a booth for state-owned surveillance equipment manufacturer Hikvision at the Security China 2018 expo in Beijing, China. Hikvision is among the 28 Chinese entities blacklisted by the US over abuses targeting Uighurs and other Muslim minorities. (AP File Photo)

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced the move, which bars the named entities from purchasing US products, saying the United States “cannot and will not tolerate the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities within China.”

According to an update to the US Federal Register set to be published Wednesday, the blacklisted firms included video surveillance company Hikvision, as well as artificial intelligence companies Megvii Technology and SenseTime.

Right groups say China has detained around one million Uighurs and other Muslims in re-education camps in western Xinjiang region in a step Washington says is reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

China had until recently denied the camps existed but now claims they are “vocational training schools” necessary to control terrorism, while decrying interference in its “internal affairs.”

The US move came after Washington banned technology giant Huawei and other Chinese firms from government contracts, amid the trade war between the two countries.