U.S. President Donald Trump signed legislation on Wednesday calling for sanctions against those responsible for repression of Uighur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province, the White House said in a statement.
The bill, which passed the U.S. Congress nearly unanimously, was intended to send China a strong message on human rights by mandating sanctions against those responsible for oppression of members of China’s Muslim minority.
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The United Nations estimates that more than a million Muslims have been detained in camps in Xinjiang.
Trump issued a “signing statement” saying that some of the bill’s sanctions requirements might limit his constitutional authority as president to conduct diplomacy so he would regard them as advisory, not mandatory.
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Trump did not hold a ceremony to mark his signing the bill into law, which came as U.S. newspapers published excerpts from a new book by his former national security adviser, John Bolton.
Among other allegations in the book, Bolton said Trump sought Chinese President Xi Jinping’s help to win re-election during a closed-door 2019 meeting and that Trump said Xi should go ahead with building the camps in Xinjiang.
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