European Union’s Foreign Ministers have approved sanctions on China over abuses in the western region of the country. The 27 nations have blacklisted four Chinese officials and one state-run entity over China’s crackdown on the group of a certain citizen in the homeland after the approval from Xi Jinping’s administration.
It’s the first time in the decade when the EU has hit China over human rights abuses since it imposed an arms embargo in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square massacre. Chinese foreign ministry said that Beijing will also ‘react with firm hand’ against such actions. EU is also planning to place the businesses tied to the military under the sanctions in the coming weeks.
EU took the measures as a part of human rights sanctions package targeting a bunch of people that also include officials in Eritrea, Libya, North Korea, Russia, and South Sudan. The mechanism is designed to pull down the human rights abuses in these countries. New sanctions placed on Russia will target the people behind abuses in Chechnya. These sanctions have also impacted the people who were involved in the Myanmar’s military coup.
In a tit-for-tat move, China has also announced sanctions on 10 European politicians and scholars and called EU’s actions ‘a move based on lies and disinformation, and termed it as gross interference in China’s internal affairs. This highly symbolic decision taken at Brussels has badly hit China and raised concerns about the human rights of Kazakhs and others who are held in internal camps which are claimed as a part of Beijing’s campaign to forcibly assimilate ethnic groups. But these camps set in 2017 are called Vocational training centers by China. However, governments across the region have always raised concern over the mistreatment of the people, with UN human rights chief Michele Bachelet, who is still being refused entry to visit the area.
