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US-CHINA-RIGHTS-DIPLOMACY-BUSINESS
Pompeo asks US business to think twice in China’s Xinjiang
WASHINGTON, May 1, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked
corporate America on Tuesday to think twice when doing business in China’s
Xinjiang region, where he appeared to liken the scale of mass incarceration
of Muslims to Nazi abuses.
Speaking to a business group, Pompeo stopped short of asking firms not to
work with China but said he hoped to spark further discussion on the
“enormous risk” of doing business in the country.
“We watch the massive human rights violations in Xinjiang where over a
million people are being held in a humanitarian crisis that is the scale of
what took place in the 1930s,” Pompeo said.
“And we see American businesses and their technology being used to help
facilitate that activity from the Chinese government. It’s something worthy
of thinking about,” the diplomatic chief said as he received an award from
Business Executives for National Security.
Pompeo added that “I don’t know the answer,” recalling that as a business
owner and a conservative Republican he opposes government interference in
commerce.
Pompeo’s remarks come as US software titan Microsoft faces scrutiny over
its joint research with Chinese government-linked scholars on artificial
intelligence, with Beijing said to be using facial recognition technology in
its crackdown in Xinjiang.
In February, US biotechnology manufacturer Thermo Fisher announced it would
stop selling equipment used to create a DNA database of the Uighur minority.
A United Nations panel has cited estimates that China has rounded up some
one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim Turkic-speaking minorities, with
activists accusing Beijing of curbing the practice of Islam.
China says the camps are “vocational training centers” to steer people away
from extremism and reintegrate them, in a region plagued by violence blamed
on Uighur separatists or Islamists.
BSS/AFP/GMR/0832 hrs