The United States this Friday (10) imposed a series of sanctions related to human rights on dozens of people and entities linked to China, Myanmar, North Korea and Bangladesh, in addition to including the Chinese artificial intelligence company SenseTime on a list prohibited for investors.
The sanctions package was announced on the date set by the UN to commemorate International Human Rights Day. The actions “send a message that democracies around the world will act against those who abuse state power to inflict suffering and repression,” said Assistant Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo.
The measures are the latest in a series of sanctions slated to coincide with the Biden administration’s Summit for Democracy, where President Jair Bolsonaro also spoke on Friday.
According to the US Treasury, China’s artificial intelligence company has developed facial recognition programs that can determine a target’s ethnicity, with a particular focus on identifying Uighurs, a minority targeted for repression in western China’s Xinjiang department, according to the states United.
China denies abuses in the region, but the US government and human rights groups say there is an ongoing genocide and that more than a million people, mostly Uighurs but also members of other Muslim minorities, have been detained in camps in recent years. of concentration in Xinjiang.
SenseTime has been added by the US government to a list of “companies in the Chinese military-industrial complex” with which US investors cannot do business. The announcement came on the eve of the company’s IPO, which planned to raise $767 million (BRL 4.3 billion) on the Hong Kong stock exchange.
In addition, Myanmar’s military companies were also targeted by sanctions. One of them, the Myanmar Defense Industries Directorate, manufactures weapons for the military and police that were used in the crackdown on opponents of this year’s military coup in the country. Myanmar’s four top regional ministers also made the list, including the head of Bago province, where the US government said at least 82 people were killed in a single day in April.
According to the Association for Assistance for Political Prisoners (AAPP), more than 1,300 people were killed by the country’s forces after the military deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1 of this year.
The United States has also placed on the veto list North Korea’s Central Prosecutor, the People’s Armed Forces Minister Ri Yong Gil, and a Russian university, on charges of facilitating the exploitation of North Korean workers.
The US State Department also on Friday banned 12 people from traveling to the United States, including officials in China, Belarus and Sri Lanka.
US TO INDICIATE POLITICIANS IN EL SALVADOR
US officials are preparing criminal charges against El Salvador’s Deputy Justice Minister Osiris Luna and another senior official, accusing them of negotiating a secret pact with gangs operating on US soil, two people involved told Reuters. The indictment comes amid rising tensions between Washington and President Nayib Bukele.
According to the sources, the charges are being prepared by a Justice Department task force against Luna, who is responsible for El Salvador’s prison system, and Carlos Marroquin, Bukele’s close ally who heads a government social programs agency Salvadoran.
The two have already been sanctioned on Wednesday (8) by the US government, which accuses them of closing an agreement with the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 gangs, with strong operations in the United States, offering money and conditions better prison terms in exchange for reduced violence in the country and political support.
​Bukele denies that his government has negotiated any truce and criticized the sanctions. “It is clear that the US government does not accept collaboration, friendship or alliances,” the president said. “It’s absolute submission or nothing.”
The investigation is being conducted by the joint task force Vulcan, a unit of the Department of Justice created in 2019 to coordinate efforts by US law enforcement agencies to dismantle MS-13. US officials say the gangs ordered assassinations on US soil from inside El Salvador’s prisons.
El Salvador classifies MS-13 as a terrorist organization, and US prosecutors have accused some of the group’s leaders of terrorist acts. The FBI was involved in the investigation. The allegations are expected to be filed in the coming months, said the sources, who requested anonymity.
US authorities also discovered that the MS-13 gang attacked an FBI agent when he intercepted a small piece of paper, known as a “wila”, which gangs use to pass coded messages to their members outside prisons. The agent fled El Salvador with his family.
Successive Salvadoran presidents have struggled to restrict MS-13 and Barrio 18 control over urban areas, where violence and extortion have generated waves of emigration to the United States.
Bukele was a vocal critic of a 2012 clandestine deal between the former government and gang leaders that fell apart two years later, which sparked a sharp rise in the country’s murder rate and led to the arrest of several government officials.
Rumors of a new deal surfaced after the homicide rate dropped about 50% a year after Bukele took office in June 2019. Deaths dropped to 17 murders per 100,000 people in 2021 from 51 in 2018, according to with the National Police.
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