US accuses supplier for Amazon, Apple, Dell, GM, Microsoft of human rights abuses

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By Ian Sherr

The US Department of Commerce added 11 Chinese companies to its list of firms implicated in human rights violations, including China’s reported campaign against Muslim minority groups from an area of the country known as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. At least one of those companies, Nanchang O-Film Tech, is listed as a supplier or undefined “partner” with nearly two dozen tech and car companies, including Amazon, Apple, Dell, GM and Microsoft.

The Commerce Department said the group of 11 companies that supported “mass arbitrary detention, forced labor, involuntary collection of biometric data and genetic analysis” targeted at Uighurs and other minority groups will face restrictions on US products, including technology.

“Beijing actively promotes the reprehensible practice of forced labor and abusive DNA collection and analysis schemes to repress its citizens,” Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said in a statement Monday. “This action will ensure that our goods and technologies are not used in the Chinese Communist Party’s despicable offensive against defenseless Muslim minority populations.”