Ian Urbina – The Outlaw Ocean Project: “Shortly after we published our investigation globally, officials from several federal agencies asked if we might consider molding our findings into a formal legal petition under the Global Magnitsky Act. We agreed and recruited help from lawyers with an NGO called the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), which has experience crafting such petitions. Today, that petition was filed to the Department of Treasury. It calls for sanctions against seven Chinese companies that our reporting found to be complicit in serious human rights abuses committed against Xinjiang workers in China’s seafood industry. The Global Magnitsky Sanctions Program was established to combat worldwide human rights abuses and corruption. It empowers the U.S. government to impose targeted sanctions on individuals or entities involved in severe human rights violations or significant corruption. Abuses committed by the Chinese government against Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang are affirmed in the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 as sanctionable offenses. The 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act expanded the sanctionable offenses of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act to include, “serious human rights abuses in connection with forced labor.” You can find more information on Glo-Mag sanctions here. The sanctioning of these companies will serve two key purposes.cFirst, these actions will continue the United States government’s commitment to addressing the Uyghur genocide currently being perpetrated by China. The United States has attempted to confront this issue through tools like the Global Magnitsky sanctions and laws such as the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020. The Chinese government has engaged in a pattern of human rights abuses against the Uyghurs, including arbitrary detention, torture, forced sterilization, and forced labor. Credible reports from the United States government, United Nations (UN), and NGOs show these abuses have been ongoing for several years. In 2021, the United States government declared China’s persecution of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang a genocide. Second, the sanctions will prevent these companies and their associates from selling goods made with Uyghur forced labor to the United States. Sanctioning these seafood processors will reaffirm the United States’ commitment to preventing goods made with Uyghur forced labor from entering the country. The loss of revenue for the perpetrators will also pressure Chinese companies to stop using Uyghur forced labor…”