The United States marked International Human Rights Day Friday with the announcement of sanctions on dozens of people and entities tied to rights abuses in China, Myanmar, North Korea and Bangladesh, while blacklisting a Chinese artificial intelligence company. The financial and visa sanctions came on the final day of President Joe Biden's virtual Summit for Democracy, where he unveiled policies to bolster democracy against threats around the world and appealed for solidarity among some 100 participants. "On International Human Rights Day, Treasury is using its tools to expose and hold accountable perpetrators of serious human rights abuse," Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said in a statement. "Our actions today, particularly those in partnership with the United Kingdom and Canada, send a message that democracies around the world will act against those who abuse the power of the state to inflict suffering and repression," he added. The sanctions on China slapped a U.S. visa ban on the current and previous chairmen of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China (XUAR), Erken Tuniyaz and Shohrat Zakir, and came a day after a tribunal in London found that Chinese policies in the region constituted genocide.

The United States Treasury slapped sanctions on 25 individuals and entities on Friday, citing human rights abuses, and blacklisted a Chinese maker of artificial intelligence (AI) facial recognition software, citing its role in the repression of Muslim Uighurs and other religious and ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. In addition to China, Friday's raft of sanctions targeted people and entities linked to human rights abuses in Myanmar, North Korea and Bangladesh. Canada and the United Kingdom joined the US in announcing sanctions over repression in Myanmar. "On International Human Rights Day, Treasury is using its tools to expose and hold accountable perpetrators of serious human rights abuse," said Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo in a statement posted on the department's website. Treasury added AI firm SenseTime Group Limited to a list of Chinese blacklisted firms for developing facial recognition programmes "that can determine a target's ethnicity, with a particular focus on identifying ethnic Uyghurs".