Zhao Lijian Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs

China decided to impose sanctions on four US individuals as a reciprocal countermeasure against US' sanctions on officials from Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region over groundless accusations of so-called human rights issue in the region, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday. 

According to the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, China will take reciprocal countermeasures against four US individuals including Nadine Maenza, chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Nury Turkel, vice chair of USCIRF, Anurima Bhargava, commissioner of USCIRF and James W. Carr, commissioner of USCIRF, said Zhao Lijian, the spokesperson, at a regular press briefing on Tuesday.

The US imposed illegal sanctions on Chinese officials under the pretext of so-called human rights issues related to China's Xinjiang. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns the move which has seriously interfered in China's internal affairs. It is a grave violation of principles of international law and the basic norms governing international relations; it risks serious damage to bilateral relations, Zhao said. 

The countermeasures include that the above-mentioned persons shall be prohibited from entering China, including the mainland, Hong Kong and Macao, their assets in China would be frozen and Chinese citizens and institutions would be forbidden from dealing with them, according to Zhao.

The four persons have repeatedly spread China-related rumors. The so-called US Commission on International Religious Freedom has kept a political bias against China and the Chinese Foreign Ministry has urged them to put an end to its prejudice, respect facts and stop interfering in China's internal affairs by releasing inaccurate reports or through other means. 

Maenza, chair of the USCIRF, has claimed in public that "a million-plus" Uygurs have been kept in "concentration camps" and "all of their blood and DNA was taken," according to a report by The Epoch Times published in March of 2020. 

Maenza gave remarks at an event in March 2020 at the Capitol to urge the US government to undertake a complete and thorough investigation into the allegations claiming that some Uygurs have been subjected to "forced organ harvesting" in China. 

According to the public records, Turkel was born in China's Xinjiang and travelled to the US in 1995 as a student. He claimed that he spent the first several months of his life in detention with his mother.

He told the BBC that Xinjiang has become "a massive prison." In an interview with BBC in November 2019, Turkel claimed that Uygurs were being "detained and tormented" and "swept into a vast system of forced labor" in China's Xinjiang region. In fact, since 1995, Turkel has never come back to Xinjiang.

USCIRF commissioners Bhargava and Carr both repeatedly spread rumors about China in public. 

It is not the first time that China opposes the USCIRF. In May this year, China imposed sanctions against Johnnie Moore, former commissioner of the USCIRF, in response to the unilateral sanctions from the US against a Chinese official.

Zhao pointed out that Xinjiang-related affairs are purely China's internal affairs, and the US has no right to arbitrarily interfere with the related matters. China urged the US to remove the so-called sanctions and stop interfering in Xinjiang-related affairs and China's other internal affairs. China will make further responses as the situation develops, Zhao said.