Washington, Jan 5 : Electric car maker Tesla attracted criticism in the US after announcing that the company has opened a showroom in China’s Xinjiang autonomous region.
Tesla, headed by Elon Musk, announced the opening in Urumqi with a social media post on 31 December saying: “On the last day of 2021, we meet in Xinjiang. In 2022 let us together launch Xinjiang on its electric journey!”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest US Muslim advocacy organisation, criticized the opening of the showroom and urged its immediate closure.
“No American corporation should be doing business in a region that is the focal point of a campaign of genocide targeting a religious and ethnic minority,” said the council’s director of national communications, Ibrahim Hooper.
According to a BBC report, Republican senator Marco Rubio, who sponsored a bill signed into law by President Joe Biden in December that requires firms to prove that goods imported from Xinjiang were not produced with forced labour, spoke out about Tesla’s decision.
“Nationless corporations are helping the Chinese Communist Party cover up genocide and slave labour in the region,” Rubio tweeted.
Scott Paul, the president of the Alliance of American Manufacturing industry body, said: “I’ll be blunt: Any company doing business in Xinjiang is complicit in the cultural genocide taking place there. But Tesla’s actions are especially despicable.”
Noteworthy, Xinjiang has been in news for past few years, as many as one million people, mainly Uighurs and members of other Muslim minorities, have been detained in camps there.

According to a report in the Guardian, the US has enacted a range of sanctions and regulatory and other measures against China over its alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang, including restrictions on US business dealings with local operators and suppliers.
President Joe Biden last month signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, and the US government intends to conduct a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, added the report.(UNI)