Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Chinese officials sanctioned for human rights abuses in rare coordinated move by Western powers

 

ICIJ

This week kicked off with news of a rare coordinated effort by Western powers to pressure China over human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

The European Union sanctioned four top Chinese officials and a paramilitary organization for their roles in large-scale surveillance, detention and indoctrination programs inflicted on Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in the region.

The targeted officials include Zhu Hailun, who was identified as a key architect of the mass-detention program in ICIJ’s China Cables investigation. Zhu’s signature was on five of six classified leaked official documents that formed the basis of the project, which chillingly describe China’s mass surveillance system, indoctrination and internment camp operations — in the Chinese government’s own words.

It’s the EU’s first such move against the superpower since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, and the U.S., U.K. and Canada immediately followed suit by issuing similar sanctions.

The reaction was swift from Beijing, which responded by blacklisting several EU politicians and academics. The tit-for-tat sanctions follow a string of recent declarations by governments and leading experts who say that China’s crackdown on Muslim minorities amounts to genocoide, Scilla Alecci reports.

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