SULAIMANI (ESTA) — The United States, UK and EU imposed sanctions on Monday on four Chinese officials, including a top security director, for human rights abuses in Xinjiang, to which Beijing responded by blacklisting Europeans in a rare escalation of diplomatic tensions.
Unlike the United States, the EU has sought to avoid confrontation with Beijing, but a decision to impose the first significant sanctions since an EU arms embargo in 1989 has inflamed tensions.
Accused of mass detentions of Muslim Uighurs in northwestern China, those targeted by the EU included Chen Mingguo, the director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau. The EU said Chen was responsible for “serious human rights violations.”
In its Official Journal, the EU accused Chen of “arbitrary detentions and degrading treatment inflicted upon Uighurs and people from other Muslim ethnic minorities, as well as systematic violations of their freedom of religion or belief”.
Others hit with travel bans and asset freezes were: senior Chinese officials Wang Mingshan and Wang Junzheng, the former deputy party secretary in Xinjiang, Zhu Hailun, and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Public Security Bureau.
However, the EU avoided sanctioning the top official in Xinjiang, Chen Quanguo, who is blacklisted by the United States, suggesting that European governments sought a softer approach.
China denies any human rights abuses in Xinjiang and says its camps provide vocational training and are needed to fight extremism.
Beijing immediately retaliated, saying it decided to impose sanctions on 10 EU individuals, including European lawmakers, the EU’s main foreign policy decision-making body known as the Political and Security Committee and two leading think-tanks.
German politician Reinhard Butikofer, who chairs the European Parliament’s delegation to China, was among the most high profile figures to be hit. The non-profit Alliance of Democracies Foundation, founded by former NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, was also blacklisted, according to a statement by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Restricted from entering China or doing business with it, Beijing accused them of seriously harming the country’s sovereignty and interests over Xinjiang. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged the EU to “correct its mistake” and not to interfere in China’s internal affairs.
While mainly symbolic, the EU sanctions mark a significant hardening in the bloc’s policy towards China, which Brussels long regarded as a benign trading partner but now views as a systematic abuser of basic rights and freedoms.
The EU had not sanctioned China significantly since it imposed an arms embargo in 1989 following the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy crackdown, although it targeted two computer hackers and a technology firm in 2020 as part of broader cyber sanctions. The arms embargo is still in place.
China is the EU’s second-largest trading partner after the United States and Beijing is both a big market and a major investor which has courted poorer and central European states.
The EU’s sanctions affect officials seen to have designed and enforced the detentions in Xinjiang and come after the Dutch parliament followed Canada and the United States in calling China’s treatment of Uighurs genocide, which China rejects.
Meanwhile, Britain imposed sanctions on four Chinese officials and construction company, while the United States announced sanctions on two more Chinese officials.
“I can tell the House [of Commons] today that I’m designating four senior individuals responsible for the violations that have taken place and persist against the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang,” foreign minister Dominic Raab told parliament, adding that a construction company was included in the sanctions.
Britain imposed sanctions on the same four officials as the EU: Chen Mingguo, the director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau, senior Chinese officials Wang Mingshan and Wang Junzheng, the former deputy party secretary in Xinjiang, Zhu Hailun, and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Public Security Bureau.
The U.S. Treasury Department also named the officials as Wang Junzheng and Chen Mingguo.
The two were targeted under the U.S. Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, it said, adding that the move complemented actions taken by the European Union, Britain and Canada.
While the actions by the United States and others avoided targeting China’s top leadership, it was the first coordinated move under the Biden administration, which took office in January and has vowed to work closely with allies in pushing back against China.
(Esta Media Network/Reuters)
