The United States on Friday disclosed a series of new rights-abuse sanctions on senior officials and entities in eight countries, with targets ranging from a Chinese firm specialising in facial recognition technology to 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.
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It said China’s artificial intelligence company SenseTime, and two ethnic Uyghur political leaders in Xinjiang, Shohrat Zakir and Erken Tuniyaz, took part in sweeping oppression of Uyghurs.
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.
The move put new pressure on SenseTime, which was preparing to list its shares in the coming week on Hong Kong’s stock market in an initial public offering.
The company, which Washington says is part of China’s ‘military-industrial complex,’ had already been placed on the US Department of Commerce’s blacklist in 2019 because its technology had been used for mass surveillance in Xinjiang.
The Treasury also announced the first new US sanctions to target North Korea since President Joe Biden took office, a move that comes after months of attempting to engage Pyongyang in talks on its nuclear program.
The Treasury accused North Korea’s government-run animation firm, SEK Studio, and companies and individuals related to it, of exploiting North Korean workers to earn much-needed foreign exchange and avoid sanctions on the country.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
