The United States on Friday unveiled a series of sanctions against 15 officials and 10 entities in eight countries, ranging from a Chinese facial recognition company to North Korean animation giant SEK.
Announced as part of the UN Human Rights Day and supported by the United Kingdom and Canada, they target officials accused of human rights violations during the repression of protests in Myanmar, detention in mass of Uyghur Muslims or the violence of the army in Bangladesh under the guise of the fight against drugs.
“Our actions today, especially those in partnership with the UK and Canada, will send a message that global democracies will act against those who abuse state power to inflict pain and repression,” said the US Treasury Department. in a press release.
These sanctions are within the scope of the law Magnitsky, which aims to fight corruption and human rights abuses, while the defense of democratic values is at the heart of Joe Biden’s foreign policy.
Erken Tuniyaz, president of the autonomous region of Xinjiang, and his predecessor Shohrat Zakir are targeted for the detention of “more than one million Uyghurs and members of other ethnic minorities mainly Moslem”, indicates the ministry.
Animation studio
Washington is also sanctioning the company SenseTime, already placed on the American blacklist since 2019, which notably designs facial recognition applications that can be used for crowd monitoring and identity verification.
This Chinese company has, according to the Treasury, “put forward its ability to identify Uyghurs wearing beards, sunglasses and masks” to serve as police surveillance in Xinjiang.
The company plans to enter the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on December 17, where it wants to raise 682 million euros (over 980 million Canadian dollars).
Long hit by terrorist attacks, Xinjiang has been the subject of a severe takeover for several years.
Beijing disputes the figure of one million Uyghurs locked up, also put forward by associations for the defense of human rights, and speaks of vocational training centers intended to keep “trainees” away from radicalization.
Also targeted by the sanctions, the North Korean animation studios SEK have acquired an international reputation, notably contributing to global successes such as The Lion King Where Pocahontas.
SEK has “used an assortment of shell companies to evade sanctions targeting the North Korean government and deceive international financial institutions,” claims the Treasury.
Extrajudicial killings
These sanctions, the first against Pyongyang since Joe Biden came to power, also target North Korean Defense Minister Ri Yong Gil and the Central Office of Public Prosecutors, accused of being part of a “judicial process. involving fundamentally unfair trials ”.
The Russian university European Institute Justo and its director are sanctioned in connection with North Korea for having sponsored “hundreds of student visas” for North Korean workers employed in Russia.
These workers generate “foreign currency income” used by the North Korean regime “to support its illegal weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.”
In Myanmar, four regional leaders and three organizations linked to the Ministry of Defense are sanctioned for being “associated with the military regime’s attacks on democracy and their brutal repression”.
The army overthrew civilian head of government Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, abruptly ending a ten-year democratic hiatus.
The US sanctions also target the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite unit of the Bangladesh army, accused of political assassinations on the sidelines of drug operations.
“NGOs accuse the RAB and other law enforcement agencies in Bangladesh of being responsible for more than 600 disappearances since 2009, nearly 600 extrajudicial killings since 2018 and torture,” says the US Treasury, adding that some victims would be political opponents, journalists and human rights activists.
At the same time, the US State Department imposed sanctions against 122 officials from China, Uganda, Belarus, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Mexico “for their involvement in gross human rights violations.”