By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters] – On Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed legislation to prohibit imports from China’s Xinjiang over fears about forced labor. The move is part Washington’s continuing pushback against Beijing’s treatment Uyghur Muslim minority.

Senate unanimously passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. It was sent to the White House by President Joe Biden, who has promised that he would sign it. The bill was unanimously passed by the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

After lawmakers reached a compromise, which eliminated any differences in bills that were introduced in the Senate and House, Congress passed the measure quickly.

For months, the Senate and the House have been fighting over Uyghur legislation. The Uyghur dispute has delayed the passing of the annual National Defense Authorization Act. This also impeded Senate confirmation of certain ambassadorial nominees of Biden including Nicholas Burns as China’s Ambassador.

To prevent such imports, the compromise includes a clause that creates a “rebuttable assumption” that goods imported from Xinjiang (where the Chinese government set up a network detention camps for Uyghurs, and other Muslim groups) were manufactured with forced labor.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio said that it was a terrible human rights situation and fully supported, as we know now, by China’s Communist Party of China. He urged senators to support the bill.

China has denied any abuse in Xinjiang. Xinjiang supplies most of the global materials for solar panel panels. But the U.S. government as well as many rights groups claim that Beijing is committing genocide.

Republicans had accused Biden’s Democrats of slowing down the passage of the legislation, fearful that it might complicate the president’s plan for renewable energy. Democrats deny that.