III. STATE-SPONSORED DOMESTIC TERROR

III. STATE-SPONSORED DOMESTIC TERROR

III. STATE-SPONSORED DOMESTIC TERROR

A. Hong Kong

The increasingly interconnected world means China sometimes cannot easily hide its appalling abuses.³⁸ The call for human rights protections in China is nothing new, although there are increasing signs the need is becoming acute.³⁹ The fact that President Xi Jinping has overseen a deterioration in human rights coinciding with a rise in his own power had led some analysts to make comparisons to Mao Zedong.⁴⁰ The U.S. can and should engage China on its deplorable human rights record. Following China’s repression in Hong Kong, President Trump signed the Hong Kong Autonomy Act⁴¹ which stripped the city of its special trading

³⁶ See generally Alexander Downer, Why China’s Wolf Warrior Diplomacy is a Historic Mistake, FIN. REV. (July 13, 2020, 12:00 AM), https://www.afr.com/world/asia/why-china-s-wolf-warrior-diplomacy-is-ahistoric-mistake-20200712-p55b93.

³⁷ *Id. *

³⁸ See, e.g., Donie O’Sullivan, Twitter Deletes China-Linked Account that Spread False Information about Hong Kong and Covid-19, CNN (June 12, 2020, 7:19 AM), https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/tech/twitter-manipulationaccount-removal/index.html.

³⁹ Margaret K. Lewis, Human Rights and the U.S.-China Relationship, 49 THE GEO. WASH. INT’L. L. REV. 471, 478 (2017).

⁴⁰ Id.

⁴¹ Andrew Restuccia & Lindsay Wise, Trump Signs Hong Kong Sanctions Bill, Pivots to Criticizing Biden, THE WALL ST. J. (July 14, 2020), https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-signs-hong-kong-sanctions-bill11594762613.

status with the U.S. The measure was necessary due to a new security law imposed by Beijing, which meant Hong Kong was no longer sufficiently autonomous from China to justify special treatment.⁴² Essentially, the security law undermined Hong Kong’s autonomy and increased the risk of sensitive U.S. technology and intellectual property being illegally diverted to unauthorized end users in China and elsewhere.”⁴³ Speaking of the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, President Trump asserted that the law provided his administration with the necessary tools to hold responsible the individuals and entities that extinguished the flame of freedom in Hong Kong.⁴⁴ In his address, President Trump equated the devolution in Hong Kong civil rights and liberties with a newfound inability to compete in free markets.⁴⁵ If President Trump is correct, China’s determination to continually oppress peoples will have longitudinal real-world economic consequences.

B. Tragedy in Xinjiang

Beyond the imposition of a police state in Hong Kong, recent events in Xinjian, China’s westernmost province, ought to shock the world’s conscience and bring condemnation upon China for human rights abuses against the Uyghur ethnic minority. Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is home to approximately 11 million Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic

⁴²James Griffiths, US-China Relations Are at an All-Time Low, but Trump Still Seems Unsure How to Handle Beijing, CNN (July 17, 2020), https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/16/asia/us-china-trump-relations-intlhnk/index.html. On July 14, 2020, President Trump signed Executive Order (EO) 13936, The President’s Executive Order on Hong Kong Normalization. The President’s Executive Order on Hong Kong Normalization, 85 FR 43413.

⁴³ BIS Final Rule Suspends EAR Hong Kong Preferential Treatment, 62 No. 30 The Gov’t Contractor ¶ 227 (Aug. 12, 2020), https://www.friedfrank.com/siteFiles/News/GOV’T%20CONTRACTOR.pdf.

⁴⁴ Morgan Chalfant, Trump Signs Bill Imposing Sanctions on China Over Hong Kong, THE HILL (July 14, 2020, 5:48 PM), https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/507341-trump-signs-bill-imposingsanction-on-china-over-hong-kong.

⁴⁵ Id.

minority that speaks a language similar to Turkish and has a unique culture.⁴⁶ Uyghur history is complex. The territory was the easternmost edge of the medieval Islamic Empire.⁴⁷ During the tenth century, the population converted to Islam from Buddhism and Christianity. Many centuries later, in 1759, the Manchus invaded their domain and “blanketed the area with colonial non-Muslim administration and limited the Islamic authority to a secondary position.”⁴⁸ In the twentieth century, various governments imposed regulations to further isolate the Uyghurs from Islam. In the 1970s, however, China implemented its open-door policy⁴⁹ and enabled the Uyghurs to restore their mosques, organize Hajj pilgrimages, and attend Islamabad universities to study Islam.⁵⁰ An Islamic renaissance flowered from 1978 to 1988 but Beijing came to view these developments as a threat to state secular authoritarianism. Forbidden for decades to practice Islam, the Uyghurs have since been subjected to Chinese coercion methods, including the depiction of Uyghur resistance as international terrorism.⁵¹ Since 2016, China interned at least one million Uyghurs in concentration camps it euphemistically calls “reeducation centers” or “vocational training and education centers.”⁵² In actuality, the centers are concentration camps, designed to brainwash Uyghurs and force them to abandon their heritage and religion.⁵³ The detainees are abused, tortured,

⁴⁶ Nectar Gan, et. al., What’s Been Happening in China’s Xinjiang, Home to 11 Million Uyghurs?, CNN (June 19, 2020), https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/19/asia/xinjiang-explainer-intl-hnkscli/index.html.

⁴⁷ Caprice L. Roberts, Rights, Remedies, and Habeas Corpus-the Uyghurs, Legally Free While Actually Imprisoned, 24 GEO. IMMIGR. L.J. 1, 12 (2009).

⁴⁸ *Id. *

⁴⁹ Deng Xiaoping transformed modern China when he created a new “open door” policy to attract foreign capital and businesses. See generally, Guocang Huan, China’s Open Door Policy: 1978-1984, 39 JOURNAL OF INT’L AFFAIRS, 1, 1-18.

⁵⁰ Roberts, supra note 47.

⁵¹ Id.

⁵² See Bill Bostock, China is Forcibly Sterilizing Uyghur Women and Giving Them Unwanted Abortions in a Mission to Purge the Muslim Minority, Report Says, BUS. INSIDER (June 29, 2020, 7:47 AM), https://www.businessinsider.com/china-forcibly-sterilizing-uighur-womenxinjiang-abortions-contraception-ap-2020-6.

⁵³ Id.

raped, and murdered.⁵⁴ China is sterilizing Uyghur women and forcing them to undergo unwanted abortions in an attempt to eradicate the group.⁵⁵ China’s campaign against the Uyghurs meets the suppression of birth criteria set forth by the United Nations Convention for the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide.⁵⁶ As one female Uyghur said in stark terms about China’s genocidal aims: “[t]he Chinese government wants to control the Uyghur population and make us fewer and fewer, until we disappear.⁵⁷ Proof of China’s inhumane treatment of the Uyghurs arrived on America’s shores in 2020 when eagle-eyed U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents seized 13 tons of product made from human hair suspected of being forcibly removed from Uyghurs imprisoned in concentration camps.⁵⁸ The grisly discovery is further evidence of China’s maintenance of a massive network of concentration camps in Xinjiang, where the Uyghur prisoners are subjected to a continual range of horrors.⁵⁹

C. High-Tech Surveillance

⁵⁴Rayhan Asat & Yonah Diamond, The World’s Most Technologically Sophisticated Genocide is Happening in Xinjiang The United States Needs to Formally Acknowledge the Scale of the Atrocities, FOREIGN POL’Y (July 15, 2020), https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/15/uighur-genocide-xinjiang-chinasurveillance-sterilization/.

⁵⁵ Bostock, supra note 52.

⁵⁶Scott Simon, China Suppression of Uighur Minorities Meets U.N. Definition of Genocide, Report Says, NPR (July 4, 2020, 7:58 AM), https://www.npr.org/2020/07/04/887239225/china-suppression-of-uighurminorities-meets-u-n-definition-of-genocide-report-s; see also China cuts Uighur births with IUDs, abortion, sterilization, ASSOCIATED PRESS (June 29, 2020), https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/15/Uyghur-genocide-xinjiang-chinasurveillance-sterilization/https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c.

⁵⁷ *Id. *

⁵⁸ Martha Mendoza, AP Exclusive: Hair Weaves From Chinese Prison Camps Seized, ASSOCIATED PRESS (July 3, 2020), https://apnews.com/fff5fc7925f09916bf6b9d5f79bb4132.

⁵⁹ Allison Gordon, 13-Ton Shipment of Human Hair, Likely From Chinese Prisoners, Seized, CNN (July 3, 2020), https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/us/china-hair-uyghur-cpb-trnd/index.html.

Not content with twentieth-century-style concentration camps, China is hard-wiring Xinjiang for segregated surveillance.⁶⁰ Applying military style cyber capabilities to civilian control, the Chinese government created a “virtual cage” that complements the physical concentration camps in Xianjing.⁶¹ To enable surveillance, Xinjiang operates under a grid management system: municipal centers are divided into squares of about 500 people and each square has an assigned police unit that monitors inhabitants by regularly scanning their identification cards, faces and bodies, DNA samples, and cell phones.⁶² In the Uyghur city of Kashgar, the police rely on an app to flag people exhibiting suspicious behavior, such as atypical smartphone use, avoiding the front door, coming and going from home or refueling someone else’s vehicle.⁶³ Human Rights Watch claims the government’s arbitrary power is reflected in the app which is designed “to consider vague, broad categories of behaviors, many of them perfectly legal, as indicators of suspiciousness.”⁶⁴ Wang Lixiong, a Chinese author who has written about China’s surveillance state in Xinjiang explains that the “goal here is instilling fear – fear that their surveillance technology can see into every corner of your life.”⁶⁵ The company behind the technology is the China Electronics Technology Group Corp., or CETC, a state-owned defense contractor.⁶⁶ China began its intense

⁶⁰ Chris Buckley & Paul Mozur, How China Uses High-Tech Surveillance to Subdue Minorities, N.Y. TIMES (May 22, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveillancexinjiang.html.

⁶¹ *Id. *

⁶² Asat & Diamond, supra note 54.

⁶³ Buckley & Mozur, supra note 60.

⁶⁴ Id.; see also Katie Canales, Leaked Chinese Documents Show How Hundreds of Thousands of Uighur Muslims Are Brainwashed in Concentration Camps, BUS. INSIDER (Nov. 24, 2019, 4:43 PM), https://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-government-documents-uighurmuslims-prison-camps-china-cables-2019-11.

⁶⁵Buckley & Mozur,* supra* note 60.

⁶⁶ Nathan Vanderklippe, China Using High-Tech Surveillance in Battle Against Spread of Coronavirus, GLOBE AND MAIL (Mar. 11, 2020), https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-china-employing-high-techsurveillance-in-battle-against-spread-of/.

Uyghur surveillance program in 2013.⁶⁷ By hacking into Uyghurowned smartphones and embedding tracking software on apps that hosted Uyghur-language news, Uyghur-targeted beauty tips, and religious texts like the Koran, the Chinese government monitored the whereabouts of purported enemies of the state around the world.⁶⁸

D. Opportunity Wasted

On June 17, 2020, President Trump signed the bipartisan Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act.⁶⁹ The Act is intended to hold Chinese officials accountable and imposes sanctions on foreign individuals and entities responsible for human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Additionally, the statute requires reports to Congress on several topics, including the Chinese government’s acquisition and development of technology to facilitate internment and mass surveillance. So far so good. Yet undermining the significant moral dimensions of the law were a series of bombshell allegations leveled at President Trump by his former National Security Advisor John Bolton. In his bestselling book,⁷⁰ The Room Where It Happened: A

⁶⁷ Paul Mozur & Nicole Perlroth, China’s Software Stalked Uighurs Earlier and More Widely, Researchers Learn, N.Y. TIMES (July 1, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/technology/china-uighurs-hackersmalware-hackers-smartphones.html.; See also Emilie C. Schwarz, Human vs. Machine: A Framework of Responsibilities and Duties of Transnational Corporations for Respecting Human Rights in the Use of Artificial Intelligence, 58 COLUM. J. TRANSNAT’L L. 232, 236 (2019) (describing how China shows no sign of stopping research on technological surveillance programs, including facial recognition software that helps officials determine a person’s current emotional state).

⁶⁸ Mozur & Perloth, supra note 67.

⁶⁹ Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, Pub. L. No. 116-145, 134 Stat. 648. Additionally, in July 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced new sanctions against China for Uyghur human rights violations he dubbed “the stain of the century.” Laura Kelly, *U.S. sanctions Chinese officials, paramilitary agency over Uighur abuses, *THE HILL (July 31, 2020, 3:21 PM), https://thehill.com/policy/international/510024-us-sanctions-chinese-officialsparamilitary-agency-over-uighur-abuses.

⁷⁰ John Bolton’s memoir sold over three quarters of a million copies in its first week of sales. Brian Stelter, John Bolton’s memoir has sold a staggering

White House Memoir, Bolton insists President Trump told President Xi Jinping he endorsed Beijing’s Uyghur concentration camps.⁷¹ Bolton noted that “Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do … which meant we could cross repression of the Uyghurs off our list of possible reasons to sanction China, at least as long as trade negotiations continued.”⁷² By President Trump’s own admission, he initially prioritized the making of a trade deal with China over punishing Beijing for mistreating the Uyghurs.⁷³ President Trump’s detractors insist this was no one-off as his record, in their view, shows a selective approach to human rights issues; regions where President Trump is looking to “make a deal” are unlikely to face sanctions.⁷⁴ For their part, China hawks privately expressed frustration because they believe President Trump did not need The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act because the Global Magnitsky Act already provided him with the authority to impose U.S. lawful entry and property sanctions against any foreign person or entity for reasons including extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.⁷⁵ From this

780,000 copies in its first week on sale, CNN (July 1, 2020), https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/01/media/john-bolton-book-bestseller/index.html.

⁷¹ Philip Ewing, Trump Told Chine To ‘Go Ahead’ With Prison Camps, Bolton Alleges in New Book, NPR (June 17, 2020, 6:11 PM), https://www.npr.org/2020/06/17/875876905/trump-told-china-to-go-ahead-withconcentration-camps-bolton-alleges-in-new-book.

⁷² *Id. *

⁷³ Michael Crowley, Trump Says He Avoided Punishing China Over Uighur Camps to Protect Trade Talks, N.Y. TIMES (July 9, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/us/politics/trump-Uyghurs-chinatrade.html;* see also* Jonathan Swan, Exclusive: Trump held off on Xinjiang sanctions for China trade deal, AXIOS (June 21, 2020), https://www.axios.com/trump-Uyghur-muslims-sanctions-d4dc86fc-17f4-42bdbdbd-c30f4d2ffa21.html.

⁷⁴ Swan, supra note 73. President Trump’s detractors point to his use of sanctions to intimidate Iran and Venezuela while he appeared reticent to impose similar restraints on China and Saudi Arabia, two countries with which he was looking to “make a deal.”

⁷⁵Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, Subtitle F of Pub. L. No. 114-328, 130 Stat. 2000.

perspective, the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act was perhaps less an expression of President Trump’s hardline stance against Uyghur oppression and more a measure by Congress to press sanction.⁷⁶