Advocates nationwide are calling for Tesla to shut down its newly opened showroom in Xinjiang, China, where government officials are charged with human rights abuses against Muslim ethnic minorities.
The electric carmaker has not responded to the request after it announced the showroom opening in Xinjiang's regional capital Urumqi on its official Weibo account last Friday.
On Friday, Tesla announced that they will meet in Xinjiang, the last day of 2021, according to the official Weibo post. Let's start Xinjiang's electric journey in 2022! The U.S. has classified China's treatment of ethnic Uyghurs as a genocide. According to Reuters, many other countries and the U.S. plan to institute a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February.
Among the various organizations that have criticized Tesla is the Council On American-Islamic Relations, which took to Twitter to express its disapproval.
Elon Musk must close Tesla's Xinjiang showroom, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said via a tweet, referring to Tesla's CEO.
The council's communications director Ibrahim Hooper said that 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. The Associated Press reports that around 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been harshly restricted from detention camps in Xinjiang. China has refused to accept the allegations of forced labor and abuse.