A bicameral campaign to put up roadblocks against a critical measure to protect the human rights of Uyghurs and other minorities persecuted by Beijing came into sharper focus last night, when Senate Democrats blocked an amendment that would insert the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act into the annual defense-authorization bill.
The Democrats say this boils down to a simple procedural problem — that the amendment in question skirts the House’s constitutional prerogative to be the exclusive source of spending and revenue measures. But this is merely a fig leaf of justification for stonewalling a piece of legislation that Uyghur advocates say is critically important to combat the Chinese Communist Party’s mass atrocities. And the senators are doing this amid stepped-up lobbying from companies that stand to lose something from combating modern slavery in China and entreaties from the Biden administration to delay or water down the legislation.
Comments