US Lawmakers Ask Blinken to Issue ‘Do Not Travel’ Notice for Xinjiang
“Tourism solely serves to whitewash these atrocities—serving the pursuits of the Chinese language Communist Occasion and authorities,” the lawmakers say.
Leaders of a bipartisan U.S. fee are asking the State Division to advise Individuals towards touring to the Xinjiang area of western China, the place the U.S. authorities say genocide is happening.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ohio), chair and co-chair of the Congressional-Govt Fee on China (CECC), despatched a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, requesting him to lift the journey advisory score for Xinjiang to the best stage—Stage 4: Do Not Journey—which usually implies that folks shouldn’t journey there.
The alert, in accordance with the lawmakers, was designed to ensure that “no U.S. insurance policies implicitly endorse the PRC’s atrocities,” referring to China’s official title, the Folks’s Republic of China.
“Tourism solely serves to whitewash these atrocities—serving the pursuits of the Chinese language Communist Occasion and authorities,” the letter says.
“Make no mistake: below the present circumstances, tourism within the XUAR serves as a conduit for Chinese language authorities’ repression of Turkic and Muslim peoples and facilitates the destruction and appropriation of their heritage and id,” the letter says.
‘Propaganda Pawns’
Along with requesting the U.S. authorities, the lawmakers additionally despatched letters to 3 personal journey corporations offering bundle holidays that would deliver American guests to Xinjiang.
These bundle holidays, typically known as Silk Highway excursions, provided purchasers alternatives to go to Xinjiang’s mosques, that are off limits to Uyghur communities to observe their religion however are used for industrial functions, in accordance with the letter.
Some excursions even embrace visiting native Uyghur households, however “Uyghurs themselves are forcibly separated from their relations, each within the area and overseas,” the lawmakers mentioned.
Furthermore, the congressmen doubted that the Turkic and Muslim people concerned within the excursions had been voluntarily doing so “given the discontent of those populations with official insurance policies,” learn the letter. “Their participation could possibly be coerced via danger of punishment from authorities for failure to conform.”
“It’s our robust perception that well-intentioned vacationers shouldn’t be put within the place of condoning or supporting atrocities—or be used as propaganda pawns—permitting the Chinese language authorities to cowl up its genocide and crimes towards humanity.”
The lawmakers requested Geographic Expeditions and Abercrombie & Kent to cease promoting excursions to Xinjiang instantly, and raised issues about Wild Frontiers’ bundle holidays within the area. All three corporations had been flagged by the Uyghur Human Rights Challenge (UHRP) in its 2023 report. The U.S.-based rights advocacy group warned the journey companies danger of implicitly supporting “the normalization of genocidal Chinese language authorities insurance policies supposed to destroy the Uyghur id.”
Wild Frontiers, a London-headquartered agency, has issued a press release following the discharge of the UHRP report, saying the corporate was “presently conducting a full investigation of our excursions within the area.”
The letter requested in regards to the present standing of Wild Frontiers’ investigation, how the probe was carried out, and why the excursions with stops in Xinjiang are nonetheless marketed on its web site. The lawmakers are additionally in search of data on whether or not there are monitoring mechanisms to make sure that native residents collaborating in its Xinjiang journey are chosen to take action freely.
The Epoch Occasions has reached out to the three journey corporations and the State Division for remark.