EU TO JOIN US IN SANCTIONING CHINA OVER HONG KONG, XINJIANG

Thu 18 March 2021:

The EU’s 27 ambassadors agreed on Wednesday to adopt new sanctions on individuals from China and other countries over human rights abuses, the first sanctions against Beijing since an EU arms embargo in 1989 following the Tianamen Square crackdown.

The United States has imposed sanctions on an additional 24 Chinese and Hong Kong officials over Beijing’s ongoing crackdown on political freedoms in the semi-autonomous city, just ahead of the Biden administration’s first face-to-face talks with China.

The step reflects Washington’s “deep concern” about the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy following changes to its election system endorsed by China’s ceremonial legislature last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Wednesday.

The U.S. announcement was made during a visit by Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Japan and South Korea, both of which are wary of China’s growing economic, military and political heft.

Meanwhile, a visit by European Union ambassadors to the Xinjiang region of China has stalled over their request for access to jailed Uyghur academic Ilham Tohti, a diplomatic source confirmed Wednesday. Since 2019, China says it has invited foreign diplomats and United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet to visit Xinjiang, where rights groups allege more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are detained in internment camps. But there has been little sign of progress.

China’s ambassador to the EU, Zhang Ming, on Tuesday said “almost everything had been arranged” for EU member states’ ambassadors to visit Xinjiang. But it had snagged on “unacceptable requests,” he added.

“They insist on a meeting with one criminal convicted by Chinese law,” he said. “This is unacceptable, I’m so sorry.”

A delegation of three EU officials who took part in a carefully organized Xinjiang visit in January 2019 previously said they believed the people they met in a “training center” were reciting a dictated speech.

British lawmakers said Wednesday that the United Kingdom should look to crack down on forced labor of Uyghurs with a blacklist of companies that cannot show clean supply chains and tough penalties for those which break anti-slavery law. Some firms operate in “willful blindness” over labor abuse risks in their supply chains, while the government is failing to properly enforce human rights standards, said the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) scrutiny committee.

“Amid compelling evidence of abuses, there has been a sorry absence of significant new government measures to prohibit U.K. businesses from profiting from the forced labor of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and other parts of China,” said committee member Nusrat Ghani in a statement. “It is deeply concerning that companies selling to millions of British customers cannot guarantee that their supply chains are free from forced labor.”

EU ambassadors approved the travel bans and asset freezes on four Chinese individuals and one entity, whose names will not be made public until formal approval by EU foreign ministers on March 22, as part of a new and wider rights sanctions list, as Reuters reported. The EU last sanctioned China, its second-largest trade partner, in June 1989, imposing an arms embargo on Beijing that is still in place.

Meanwhile, China has rejected accusations of persecution and forced labor of Uyghurs, saying the camps offer vocational training and help to fight terrorism and extremism. Ming said on Tuesday that “China haters” were spreading lies for political gain. He warned against planned EU sanctions for human rights violations, saying Beijing would not yield if Brussels interfered in its internal affairs.

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