Report: U.S. considering sanctions against Chinese officials over detention of Muslim minorities

Ethnic Uyghur women pass Chinese military members.

(Image credit: Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)

For the last several months, the Trump administration has discussed imposing sanctions against senior Chinese government officials in response to Beijing detaining and torturing ethnic Uighurs, a minority Muslim group, in internment camps, current and former U.S. officials told The New York Times.

Officials from the White House, Treasury Department, and State Department have also talked about limiting sales of American surveillance technology that China uses to monitor Uighurs in the northwestern part of the country, the Times reports. On Sunday, Human Rights Watch released a report based on interviews with 58 former residents of Xinjiang who said they were taken to camps where they had to pledge loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party and denounce parts of Islam; some also said they were tortured by security officers.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.