Bill Text: CA AR25 | 2023-2024 | Regular Session | Introduced
Bill Title: Relative to a Resolution Condemning the Human Rights Violations against the Uyghur People in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Supporting the Work of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
Spectrum: Moderate Partisan Bill (Democrat 61-18)
Status: (Passed) 2023-03-27 - Read. Adopted. (Page 934.). [AR25 Detail]
Download: California-2023-AR25-Introduced.html
CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE—
2023–2024 REGULAR SESSION
House Resolution
No. 25
| Introduced by Assembly Member Gabriel |
March 22, 2023 |
Relative to a Resolution Condemning the Human Rights Violations against the Uyghur People in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Supporting the Work of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
HR 25, as introduced, Gabriel.
Digest Key
Bill Text
WHEREAS, Uyghurs are ethnically and culturally a Turkic people living in the areas of Central Asia, commonly known as East Turkistan, and referred to by the Chinese government as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; and
WHEREAS, The Uyghurs are primarily Muslim, and they are the second largest predominantly Muslim ethnicity in China after the Hui; and
WHEREAS, Human rights groups, including the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, the Institute for the Study of Genocide, and the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, believe the Chinese government has gradually stripped away the religious and other freedoms of the Uyghurs, creating an oppressive system of mass surveillance, detention, indoctrination, and even forced sterilization; and
WHEREAS, A Human Rights Watch investigation and report found that since 2017, the Chinese government has perpetrated human rights abuses on a massive scale in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, targeting the Uyghur population and other Turkic and Muslim-majority peoples on the basis of their religion and ethnicity; and
WHEREAS, These abuses include arbitrary mass detention of an estimated range of 1,000,000 to 1,800,000 people at more than 85 identified camps in the region and a program to “cleanse” ethnic minorities of their “extremist” thoughts through reeducation and forced labor; and
WHEREAS, Despite obstacles to human rights investigations created by the Chinese government, investigators from the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, the RAND Corporation, and the New York Times have drawn on refugee accounts, satellite imagery, and government records to document the construction of the detention camps and cases of forced labor across the Uyghur region, including both detainee labor inside internment camps and multiple forms of involuntary labor at workplaces across the region and even in other parts of China; and
WHEREAS, The human rights investigations by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Worker Rights Consortium, and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and investigative journalists from The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and ABC Australia show that the breadth of this policy creates significant risk of the presence of forced labor at virtually any workplace, industrial or agricultural, in the Uyghur region; and
WHEREAS, On January 19, 2021, then-Secretary of State Michael Pompeo stated “Our exhaustive documentation of the PRC’s actions in Xinjiang confirms that since at least March 2017, local authorities dramatically escalated their decades-long campaign of repression against Uyghur Muslims and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups, including ethnic Kazakhs and ethnic Kyrgyz. Their morally repugnant, wholesale policies, practices, and abuses are designed systematically to discriminate against and surveil ethnic Uyghurs as a unique demographic and ethnic group, restrict their freedom to travel, emigrate, and attend schools, and deny other basic human rights of assembly, speech, and worship. PRC authorities have conducted forced sterilizations and abortions on Uyghur women, coerced them to marry non-Uyghurs, and separated Uyghur children from their families”; and
WHEREAS, On March 11, 2020, in support of the just-introduced Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) President Richard Trumka stated in support that “There is no debate about the gravity and scale of the abuse, but there has been no action to end it. We fully support this legislation that lays out how the United States will investigate further, raise awareness of the problem and take action consistent with our people’s values to end this trade in tainted goods and hold companies and individuals responsible for violating the human rights and attacking the way of life of these people. We are together in rejecting this affront to humanity”; and
WHEREAS, On December 23, 2021, President Joseph Biden signed into law the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a bipartisan bill which requires the administration to take significant new action to prevent goods produced in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, where state-sponsored forced labor is widespread, from entering United States markets; and
WHEREAS, On September 1, 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged a report by the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner relating to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, stating that “The United States welcomes this important report, which describes authoritatively the appalling treatment and abuses of Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups by the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This report deepens and reaffirms our grave concern regarding the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity that PRC government authorities are perpetrating against Uyghurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang;” and
WHEREAS, Since the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act went into effect on June 21, 2022, approximately 30 entities have been identified and listed by the United States Department of Homeland Security as affiliated with the use, recruitment, transport, transfer, or harbor of forced labor out of Xinjiang, with more entities being identified and added; and
WHEREAS, Eighty-four percent of cotton production from China comes from the Uyghur region and 20 percent of the world’s cotton comes from the Uyghur region; and
WHEREAS, Roughly one in five cotton garments sold globally contains cotton or yarn from the Xinjiang region, which means it is likely tainted by forced labor; and
WHEREAS, More than 190 organizations spanning 36 countries issued a call to action, seeking formal commitments from clothing brands to cut all ties with suppliers implicated in Uyghur forced labor and to end all sourcing from the Xinjiang region of China in the next 12 months; and
WHEREAS, The coalition, called “End Uyghur Forced Labor,” includes the AFL-CIO, Human Rights Watch, and Anti-Slavery International, among other organizations; now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Assembly of the State of California, That the Assembly hereby condemns the human rights violations against the Uyghur people in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and supports the work of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act; and be it further
Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies of this resolution to the author for appropriate distribution.
