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Floor Speech
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Mr. MERKLEY. I join with my colleague from Florida, Senator Rubio, in calling out genocide in China. It is a terrible term describing horrific acts in which humanity assaults humanity.
Just 7 weeks from now--7 weeks from this Friday--there is going to be the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in China, and there is going to be fancy dances by minorities from across the country. And China will be saying to the world: See what a beautiful country we have, with all this diversity, including people from Xinjiang Province, the Uighurs.
Behind those fancy performances in the opening ceremonies, there is a very, very ugly truth. That ugly truth is that the Chinese Government is committing genocide against the Uighur population. More than a million Uighurs are enslaved, and they are enslaved to produce products for the world for the profit of China.
And I don't think anyone in America wants us to be complicit in genocide by buying these products. That is what this bill is all about.
It is to say: Companies, when you produce things in Xinjiang, make sure that the supply chain is investigated and is untainted by these horrific acts.
This is bipartisan. This is bicameral. This is the best of the American spirit. And so I strongly, strongly support passage of this act. We passed it before. As my colleague just mentioned, we passed it unanimously. And now we have a version that has been worked out with the House version. It is ready to roll.
So, colleagues, let's get this done as a powerful statement of where America stands on human rights, a powerful statement that we are against genocide, a powerful statement that, when it comes to these human rights principles, we stand together--Democrat and Republican, House and Senate.
I extend my appreciation to our colleagues in the House, Congressman Smith and Congressman McGovern. We all worked together on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. We held a series of hearings to understand better not just the horrific acts that are occurring in Xinjiang but also horrific acts that are happening in Tibet and Hong Kong. But this bill focuses on the genocide against the Uighurs. Let's get this done. It matters. Let's act now.
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