US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that the Chinese Communist Party is not only crushing freedom in Hong Kong and threatening a free Taiwan but also trying to dominate the global communication networks.
"Today, the Chinese Communist Party is crushing freedom in Hong Kong. It is threatening a free Taiwan and trying to dominate the world communications networks," Pompeo said during a visit to Iowa on Friday (local time).
"A few weeks back, I read a report about the Chinese Communist Party forcing mass abortions and sterilisation on Chinese Muslims in Western China. These are some of the most gross human rights violations we have seen and I have referred to it as the stain of the century," he added.
On Friday, Washington booked five Chinese foreign nationals and two Chinese entities under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. It also imposed visa sanctions on certain employees of Chinese technology compes including Huawei that provide material support to regimes engaging in human rights abuses globally.
In a statement on Wednesday, Pompeo had announced the restrictions and said: "Telecommunications compes around the world should consider themselves on notice: If they are doing business with Huawei, they are doing business with human rights abusers."
Pompeo had said that Huawei is an arm of the CCP's surveillance state that censors political dissidents and enables mass internment camps in Xinjiang and the indentured servitude of its population shipped all over China.
The US action comes a day after the UK announced its decision to ban British compes from buying Huawei-produced equipment for 5G networks from the end of the year.
US President Donald Trump called Chinese technology "untrustworthy".
"We confronted untrustworthy Chinese technology and telecom providers. We convinced many countries not to use Huawei because it's a big security risk. Just today, the UK announced that they are not going to be using it," Trump had said on Wednesday.
The United States had designated Chinese telecom compes Huawei and ZTE Corp as national security threats, saying they have close ties with the Chinese Communist Party and China's military apparatus.
( With inputs from ANI )