BIPARTISAN US BILL WOULD GRANT PRIORITY REFUGEE STATUS TO CHINA’S UYGHURS

Wed 14 April 2021:

China’s Uyghur minority subject to government repression would become eligible for prioritized US refugee status under legislation.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic Senator Chris Coons put forward the “Uyghur Human Rights Protection Act,” which would grant Priority 2 refugee status to Uighurs and other groups, including Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, who have faced repression in or fled from China’s Xinjiang region.

“The Uyghur Human Rights Protection Act would make it easier for Uyghurs and members of other Turkic or Muslim minority groups to apply for resettlement in the United States, and it encourages our allies and partners to implement similar policies,” Coons, a Democrat, and his Republican colleague Rubio said in a joint press release on Tuesday.

Priority 2 status would allow hundreds, or possibly thousands, of Uighurs to forgo a United Nations referral and apply directly as refugees to the U.S. government, reducing concerns that Beijing could be notified by a third country and seek their deportation back to China.

The bill also encourages U.S. partners and allies to make refugee accommodations for Uighurs.

The lawmakers introduced the legislation shortly after leading a bipartisan group urging Secretary of State Antony Blinken to take additional measures to aid Uyghur and other Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang Province, the release said.

“The United States must continue to speak out against the PRC’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and we must also provide assurance and protection for the Uyghurs and all those facing persecution as a result of their religious or ethnic identity,” Coons said in a statement referring to the People’s Republic of China, the country’s formal name.

Similar legislation has been introduced in the US House of Representatives by Congressmen Ted Deutch and Mario Díaz-Balart, the release added.

Critics have accused China’s Communist Party of genocide amid reports in media and by human rights groups that more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang have been imprisoned in re-education camps.

U.N. experts and human rights groups estimate that more than one million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities have been detained in harsh conditions in Xinjiang as part of what Beijing calls a vocational training campaign to battle terrorism.