The US Department of Commerce said Friday it would sanction a Chinese government institute and eight Chinese companies for human rights abuses against Uighurs and other minorities in the country's western Xinjiang region.

"These nine parties are complicit in human rights violations and abuses committed in China's campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labor and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region," the Commerce Department said in a statement.