The U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is preparing to hold its second hearing Thursday night during which it will highlight the well-documented human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims and other religious minorities living in the western region of the country.
The hearing, led by chairman Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), will take place during the primetime 7:00 p.m. hour. It will air on C-SPAN and be streamed by the committee online. Witnesses will include those who have experienced or seen the regional atrocities as well as experts on the matter.
In a statement provided to Breitbart News, Gallagher previewed the hearing, saying its contents “should serve as a warning” about what to expect if the CCP expands its control in the world.
“The Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing Uyghur genocide reveals the Party’s true nature. It should serve as a warning for what the world would look like under CCP leadership,” he said. “Religious minorities are rounded up in concentration camps and subjected to forced labor. Women are subjected to forced abortion, sterilization, and IUD insertion. Families are separated. An ethnic group is being systematically exterminated.”
In a call ahead of the hearing, Elisha Wiesel, son of Holocaust concentration camp survivor and Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel, emphasized the magnitude of the issue.
Wiesel said his family’s foundation is planning to focus on the Uyghur people and begin making grants to activists working on their behalf. He also praised the heightened economic pressure that the recent Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) applied to companies profiting from those enslaved in China.
China has “done a very effective job at creating a wall of silence around this,” Wiesel said, noting that witness testimonies like those of his father have been the “most compelling” to him in terms of understanding the issue.
The U.S. State Department has repeatedly characterized activity in Xinjiang, where the crimes against Uyghurs and others have been uncovered, as genocide during both the Trump and Biden administrations.
The department most recently found in a human rights report that crimes taking place in Xinjiang included:
The arbitrary imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty of more than one million civilians; forced sterilization, coerced abortions, and more restrictive application of the country’s birth control policies; rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence; torture of a large number of those arbitrarily detained; and persecution including forced labor and draconian restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression, and freedom of movement.
In his statement, Gallagher drew upon the history of the Second World War, saying that since that time, “the world has said ‘never again.’ But a genocide is, in fact, happening again. Now, it is time to do everything we can to stop it and ensure that no American – individual, company, investor, or university – remains knowingly or unknowingly complicit.”
The committee, formally named the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, was established in Congress this year with the support of all Republicans and a majority of Democrats.
Gallagher emphasized the bipartisan nature of the committee during its opening hearing last month, saying the committee had an “excellent group of thoughtful legislators” on both sides of the political aisle. From their public communication, Gallagher appears to have a good working relationship with Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), who is leading the Democrats as committee ranking member.
The initial hearing set the stage for the committee’s next two years of work, as Gallagher detailed its plans to “investigate and expose the ideological, technological, economic, and military threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party.”
“We may call this a strategic competition, but it’s not a polite tennis match. This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake,” he said.
Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.