On October 7, 2019, the US government has blacklisted a number of Chinese companies over alleged human rights abuses against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang province. Twenty-eight Chinese companies have been added to the Entities List, which prevents them from accessing US markets without approval from the US government. The companies include Hikvision, Dahua Technology, and Megvii Technology, along with a number of smaller corporations and government agencies, which the US maintains are “implicated in human rights violations and abuses.” Hikvision is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of surveillance technology.
The move stems from allegations that the Chinese government has been systematically persecuting the mostly-Muslim Uyghur people by detaining them in camps and subjecting them to intense surveillance. Rights groups have reported that, in the camps, the Uyghur people are forced to speak only Mandarin Chinese and to practice obedience to the Chinese government. China denies that it is engaging in human rights violations, maintaining instead that the detention camps in which the mostly Muslim Uyghurs have been placed are “vocational training centers” intended to combat extremism.
