Briefing Wrap-Up: Oversight Republicans Scrutinize CCP’s Persecution of the Uyghur People

WASHINGTON – Today, the Subcommittee on National Security held a joint briefing with the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation to examine China’s persecution of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang. In July, National Security Subcommittee Ranking Member Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) called on the House Oversight Democratic leadership to hold a hearing on the Chinese government’s persecution of the Uyghur people.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is detaining up to a million people in internment camps based on their religious and cultural identity, keeping them in forced labor. The CCP has also engaged in a campaign of birth suppression which includes forced abortions, sterilizations, and intrauterine contraceptive methods in order to suppress birthrates of religious and cultural minorities in Xinjiang. Such draconian and inhumane tactics constitute one of the criteria for genocide. The CCP has engaged in a massive disinformation and propaganda campaign in an attempt to cover up its atrocities.

During the hearing, Subcommittee Ranking Member Grothman raised concerns about China’s persecution of the Uyghur people, including its use of surveillance and their efforts to exert control of Uyghurs living abroad.

Below are Ranking Member Grothman’s prepared remarks.

Good morning. I want to thank the Chairman for quickly responding to my request to have a hearing on this issue by scheduling this important briefing. I hope that we can have a hearing on this issue also in the future. 

I also want to thank each of our panelists here today for taking the time to brief us, especially Mr. Dolkun Isa who is briefing us all the way from Germany.

Religious freedom is something so fundamental to Americans across the country. 

So it is particularly disturbing to us when we learn what the Chinese Communist Party is doing to its own citizenry.

It is now undisputable that the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in the wholesale repression of an entire culture. 

According to their communist ideology, Uighurs and other ethnic minorities living in that country are threats simply because they maintain their own religion and cultural practices.

The Chinese Communist Party has worked hard through disinformation and propaganda to cover this up.  Yet as the months go by, what we are learning continues to shock the conscience of every American who holds dear the concept of Freedom of Religion.

What is the extent of these atrocities?

Over a million people detained in concentration camps.

Widespread use of forced labor.

Birth suppression targeted at Uighurs and other ethnic minorities, which includes forced invasive birth control measures, forced sterilizations, forced abortions.

These tragedies are being perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party to overcome the culture and religion of the Uighur people and other ethnic minorities.

I am particularly concerned that the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign to suppress births among ethnic minorities – even without considering the concentration camps and forced labor camps – meets one of the criteria for genocide recognized by the United Nations.

Although I am heartened by the recent passage of the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act and sanctions implemented by the Trump Administration against those involved in serious human rights abuses against the Uighur people, the repression has not yet stopped.

Instead, the Chinese Communist Party has engaged in a massive disinformation and propaganda campaign.

As we will hear from one of our panelists, the Chinese Communist Party even engages in “hostage propaganda” to whitewash what it is doing to the Uighur people and to silence Uighur critics living abroad.

We must not fall victim to yet more propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party.  Instead, we must continue to shine a light on what the Chinese Communist Party are doing to the Uighur people.

And we must consider whether further legislation or other actions are necessary.

I look forward to hearing from our panelists today about what they have learned about the Chinese Communist Party’s actions against the Uighur people, as well as what actions they recommend we take in response.

I yield back.

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