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On Monday, China announced that it will sanction 10 prominent European Union politicians and academics, and 4 of its institutions, in response to the sanctions that the European Union had approved on Monday against China for human rights violations committed in the country. the Uighurs. Sanctioned persons and their families will be banned from entering China; Instead, companies related to them and the institutions involved will be banned from doing business with China itself.
The Uighurs are an ethnic minority, predominantly Muslim, living mainly in China’s western Xinjiang region. Various journalistic investigations, testimonies and UN reports have revealed that China has held and still holds millions of Uighurs in prison camps, defined as “transformation through education.” The Chinese government has always denied the systematic crackdown on the Uyghurs, justifying it as an anti-terror campaign.
– Read also: Will China use facial recognition to identify Uyghurs?
The EU sanctions against China are targeting 4 Chinese state officials and an institution in the country who are responsible for the crackdown on the Uighurs. They include bans on traveling to the European Union and doing business, similar to those imposed by China in response, and above all have symbolic value. These are the first sanctions that the European Union has imposed on China since 1989, when an arms embargo was adopted after the massacre perpetrated by the Chinese government at the Tiananmen Square demonstration in Beijing, which is still in force today.
China responded that the European Union should stop giving others “human rights lessons” and “interfere in their internal affairs”, and threatened to intensify its reactions if the European Union continues with this policy. Among the institutions sanctioned by China is also the Council of the European Union, an institution that holds legislative power together with the European Parliament, made up of the ministers of the member states according to the issues discussed. Among those sanctioned, however, there are also European university professors who have investigated and revealed through publications the condition of Uighurs in Xinjiang.
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