Export Controls, Sanctions Needed for China Human Rights Abuses in Tibet, Lawmakers Say
The Commerce Department should add China-affiliated public security bureaus and others to the Entity List for their involvement in a “mass DNA collection project” in Tibet, chairs of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China said in a letter this month to the Biden administration. They said Chinese officials in Tibet have likely purchased DNA kits and replacement parts from American biotechnology company Thermo Fisher Scientific and are using those products for “political identification,” racial profiling and other “egregious” human rights abuses.
Placing those entities on the Entity List would follow similar actions taken by Commerce to list various Chinese security bureaus for contributing to human rights abuses in Xinjiang, wrote Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., chairs of the commission. “This will ensure that U.S. companies are not contributing to, and are not directly or indirectly complicit in, the collecting and building of biometric ID surveillance capabilities in the [Tibet Autonomous Region] or other Tibetan areas.”
The lawmakers said Thermo Fisher Scientific sold DNA kits and replacement parts for its DNA sequencers to police in the TAR, although the company says its products are used for “routine forensic investigations” and “police work.” But the letter said it's “impossible” for Thermo Fisher to “claim with confidence that its products were being used simply for ‘police casework.’” They added that with “so few safeguards for how DNA and other sensitive biometric data is gathered and used” in China, the “biometric collection and analysis equipment could enable gross violations of human rights -- from coercive mass surveillance to the harvesting of organs.”
The letter noted that Commerce blocked certain exports to Xinjiang in 2019 and “police in Tibet should face the same prohibition.” The agency also should work with Congress to “ensure that export controls are sufficient to stop future export of technology driving [China’s] deployment and management of biometric ID surveillance. Such technology must not be exported to authoritarian governments’ use in programs of social control, and ensuring effective export controls is crucial for protecting global freedoms and U.S. national security.”
End users of these technologies should also be held accountable, the lawmakers said, including through financial sanctions. “Such action could include Global Magnitsky sanctions or visa restrictions for officials in Tibetan areas for their complicity in mass biometric data collection and the forced separation of Tibetan children from their parents,” the letter said. The list of officials who should be sanctioned is likely very long.”
A Commerce spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.