The US has placed broad human rights penalties on dozens of individuals and businesses linked to China, Myanmar, North Korea, and Bangladesh, as well as adding a Chinese artificial intelligence firm to an investment blacklist.
In an action commemorating Human Rights Day, Canada and the United Kingdom joined the United States in imposing sanctions related to human rights violations in Myanmar, while the United States also imposed the first new sanctions on North Korea under President Joe Biden’s administration and targeted Myanmar military entities, among others.
“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,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a statement.
“On International Human Rights Day, Treasury is using its tools to expose and hold accountable perpetrators of serious human rights abuse.”
Requests for comment were not immediately returned by the North Korean mission at the United Nations, as well as the Chinese, Myanmar, and Bangladesh embassies in Washington.
The penalties are the latest in a series of steps timed to coincide with Biden’s two-day virtual Summit for Democracy, during which he outlined initiatives to strengthen democracy throughout the world and support for pro-democracy legislation in the US.
On Friday, Biden stated that commitments made by some of the summit’s more than 100 international leaders would oppose increasing autocracy, battle corruption, and support human rights.
“This is going to help seed fertile ground for democracy to bloom around the world,” he said in a speech closing the summit.
The Treasury Department added SenseTime to a list of “Chinese military-industrial complex corporations” on Friday, accusing the company of developing face recognition programmes that may establish a target’s ethnicity, with a special focus on identifying ethnic Uighurs.
As a result, US investors will be prohibited from investing in the company. In an initial public offering, SenseTime is on the verge of selling 1.5 billion shares (IPO).
The company began addressing the status of the planned $767 million sale with Hong Kong’s stock exchange after learning of the Treasury limitations earlier this week, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
More than a million people, mostly Uighurs and members of other Muslim minorities, have been detained or imprisoned in a huge system of camps in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang in recent years, according to UN experts and rights groups.
China denies human rights violations in Xinjiang, but the US government and several human rights organisations claim Beijing is committing genocide there.
The Treasury Department announced sanctions against two Myanmar military enterprises and an organisation that provides military reserves.
One of the organisations targeted is the Directorate of Defense Industries, which manufactures weapons for the military and police, which have been used in a savage crackdown on opponents of the military’s February 1 coup.
The Treasury also singled out four regional chief ministers, including Myo Swe Win, who leads the military government’s administration in the Bago region, where more than 80 people were slain in a single day in April, according to the Treasury.
Canada has also placed sanctions on four businesses linked to Myanmar’s military administration, while the UK has put new restrictions on the Myanmar military.
Myanmar was thrown into chaos on February 1 when the military deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her government, sparking daily protests in cities and regions and violence between the military and ethnic minority militants.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), military government forces attempting to quell resistance have killed over 1,300 people.
Global Witness, a human rights advocacy group, said in a statement that the measures were “unlikely to meaningfully harm the military junta’s bottom line” because they did not focus on Myanmar’s natural gas industry, which is a key source of foreign income for the military.
The Treasury also designated North Korea’s Central Public Prosecutors Office, as well as Ri Yong Gil, the former minister of social security and recently appointed Minister of People’s Armed Forces, and a Russian university, for promoting the export of North Korean labourers.
North Korea has long sought the easing of punitive US and international sanctions imposed in response to its nuclear weapons programmes, and has characterised US criticism of its human rights record as evidence of a hostile stance against it.
Without success, the Biden administration has repeatedly urged North Korea to engage in discussion over its nuclear and missile programmes.
On Friday, the US State Department blocked 12 people from entering the country, including officials from China, Belarus, and Sri Lanka.
Treasury also sanctioned Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion and six persons associated with it for being “an entity that has engaged in, or whose members have engaged in, serious human rights abuse.”
