US to impose travel ban on Huawei employees for rights abuses

NEW YORK: The Trump administration has announced that it will impose travel restrictions on employees of the Chinese technology giant Huawei and other Chinese companies that provide material support to regimes engaging in human rights violations and abuses globally.

The announcement came a day after the British government said it would ban Huawei from its 5G networks over concerns that sensitive data could be compromised by the Chinese Communist Party.

Addressing a press conference, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Huawei employees found to be providing material support to regimes engaging in human rights violations and abuses globally would be hit with sanctions.

He said, “Companies impacted by today’s action include Huawei, an arm of the CCP’s surveillance state that censors political dissidents and enables mass internment camps in Xinjiang and the indentured the servitude of its population shipped all over China.”

“Telecommunications companies around the world should consider themselves on notice: If they are doing business with Huawei, they are doing business with human rights abuses,” Pompeo remarked.

At a later event, Mike Pompeo informed that the administration is finalising plans to minimise data theft from the popular Chinese video streaming app TikTok.

 “Whether it’s TikTok or any of the other Chinese communications platforms, apps, infrastructure, the administration has taken seriously the requirement to protect the American people from having their information end up in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.

In this regard, Huawei termed the decision unfair and said that it was disappointed. “Huawei operates independently of the Chinese government,” it said in a statement.

“We are a private, employee-owned firm. We are disappointed by this unfair and arbitrary action to restrict visas of our employees who work tirelessly to contribute to technological innovation in the US and around the world,” Huawei added.