Florida Sen. Marco Rubio co-sponsored in 2020 the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Signed into law by President Joe Biden one year later, the UFLPA has made it U.S. policy to assume that all goods manufactured in Xinjiang, located in northwest China, are product of forced labor.
For years, human rights groups and governments all across the world have accused China of committing crimes and human rights violations against Uyghurs, a minority ethnic group in Xinjiang, including detaining more than a million people against their will and using them for forced labor.
But despite the restrictions put in place by the U.S. government, recent reports allege that some XUAR-based pharmaceutical companies are still exporting their products to the U.S.
In response, Sen. Rubio sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner (FDA) Robert Califf and to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, demanding the pharmaceutical companies be blacklisted by the federal government.
Concretely, reports have alleged that Xinjiang Nuziline Bio-Pharmaceutical Co. and SEL Biochem Xinjiang Co. are using forced labor in order to maintain competitive export prices.
On the letter, Senator Rubio slammed both the FDA and DHS, saying the agencies have not "conducted sufficient oversight into the pharmaceutical and API producers allowed to conduct business in the U.S., nor made sufficient efforts to uphold U.S. law,"
"The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act assures the American people that the products they purchase were made without slave labor," Rubio said in the letter. "It is clear that the lack of oversight by the FDA has not made this true. The FDA and DHS have a responsibility to rectify this dangerous error and uphold the law."
Rubio requested both agencies to place Xinjiang Nuziline Bio-Pharmaceutical Co. and SEL Biochem Xinjiang Co. on the UFLPA's Entity list, which would effectively ban their imports from the U.S.
This is not the first time Florida's senior senator calls for the U.S. to hold China accountable in their handling of the XUAR. In 2020, Rubio introduced the bipartisan Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, a bill that places sanctions on individuals connected with human rights violations.
That act is set to expire next year, but in June, Rubio and Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley joined forces in an attempt to introduce the Uyghur Rights Policy Reauthorization Act to ensure the continued U.S. support for the human rights of Uyghurs and other ethnic groups for another five years.
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