The top Republican lawmaker on the House Armed Services Committee introduced a bill that would withdraw the United States from the United Nations and the World Health Organization, citing human rights abuses in China.
It’s “unconscionable” for the U.S. to continue participating in the U.N. while China is also a member, said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), who introduced the American Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2022. If passed, the bill would seek to block funds from being disbursed to the U.N. or any agency associated with it, arguing coalition leaders have aided China in carrying out genocide.
“The Charter of the United Nations states the U.N.’s mission to ‘reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small,’” Rogers told Fox News. “It’s clear the U.N. has abandoned the ideals set in its founding charter, and that’s why, among many other reasons, I’ve reintroduced legislation to withdraw the United States from the U.N.”
Rogers initially introduced legislation in 2015 that would withdraw the country from both the U.N. and WHO, but the bill never made it to the House floor for a vote, according to an aide in his office. However, the Alabama Republican is hoping to use recent reports of human rights abuses against the Uyghur people in China as momentum to get the bill passed in Congress.
Chinese leaders have been accused of imprisoning up to 3 million Uyghurs in China, with country leaders justifying it as “reeducation” designed to prevent Islamic extremism. These imprisonments, along with reports of forced sterilizations and abortions, have prompted several countries, including the U.S., to condemn China.
Congress passed a bill in December, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, that prohibits the importation of goods made in the Xinjiang region through forced labor.
Rogers also wants to remove the U.S. from the WHO, arguing the organization had put “public health second to the Chinese Communist Party” by helping to “cover up the origins of COVID-19,” he told the outlet.
“We believe that the jarring and public capitulations to the CCP by the U.N. and the WHO in the past two years will bring a renewed interest in Rep. Rogers’s bill,” an aide for Rogers told Fox.
