BRUSSELS: The European Union on Monday imposed sanctions on four Chinese officials, including a senior 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 tried to avoid confrontation with Beijing, but the decision to impose the first major sanctions since the EU arms embargo in 1989 has fueled tensions.
Accused of mass arrests of Uighur Muslims in northwestern China, one of the EU’s targets is Chen Mingguo, director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau. The EU said Chen was responsible for “serious human rights violations”.
In its Official Gazette, the EU accused Chen of “arbitrary arrests and degrading treatment inflicted on Uighurs and people from other Muslim ethnic minorities, as well as systematic violations of their freedom of religion or belief.”
Others affected by travel bans and asset freezes were: senior Chinese officials Wang Mingshan and Wang Junzheng, the former party deputy secretary in Xinjiang, Zhu Hailun and the Public Security Bureau of the Xinjiang Construction and Production Corps.
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, saying its camps provide vocational training and are necessary to combat extremism.
Beijing immediately retaliated, saying it decided to impose sanctions on 10 EU people, 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 heads the European Parliament delegation in China, was one of the most prominent figures to be attacked. The nonprofit Alliance of Democracies, founded by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, was also blacklisted, according to a statement from China’s Foreign Ministry.
With restrictions on entering China or doing business with it, Beijing accused Xinjiang of seriously damaging the country’s sovereignty and interests over Xinjiang. China’s Foreign Ministry urged the EU to “correct its mistake” and not interfere in China’s internal affairs.
While primarily symbolic, the EU sanctions mark a significant tightening in the bloc’s policy toward China, which Brussels long viewed as a benign trading partner but now views as a systematic abuser of basic rights and freedoms.
The EU had not sanctioned China in any meaningful way since it imposed an arms embargo in 1989 following the pro-democracy crackdown on Tiananmen Square, although it targeted two hackers and a tech company in 2020 as part of sanctions. broader cybernetics. The arms embargo is still in force.
“Harmful, useless”
All 27 EU governments agreed to the punitive measures, but Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto called them “harmful” and “pointless”, reflecting the bloc’s divisions on how to deal with China’s rise and protect commercial interests.
China is the EU’s second-largest trading partner after the United States, and Beijing is both a large market and a major investor that has courted the poorest and central European states.
But the EU, which sees itself as a defender of human rights, is deeply concerned about the fate of the Uighurs.
Activists and UN rights experts say at least one million Muslims are being held in camps in the remote western region of Xinjiang. Activists and some Western politicians accuse China of using torture, forced labor and sterilization.
The EU sanctions affect officials believed to have engineered and enforced the arrests in Xinjiang and come after the Dutch parliament followed Canada and the United States in calling China’s treatment of Uyghurs genocide, which China rejects. .
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