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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.
‘A
WATERSHED MOMENT’
Former top Maltese official Keith Schembri, who was a prominent
figure in the police probe into the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana
Galizia, was charged with a slew of financial crimes
following an investigation that grew partly out of revelations from the
Panama Papers.
REPORTING
COVID-19 DATA
As the world marks one year of shutdowns triggered by the pandemic, we
talk to veteran journalist Syed Nazakat about operating India’s
first data-driven website dedicated to healthcare reporting
in our latest installment of Meet The Investigators.
ENABLERS OF
FINANCIAL CRIME
There’s still time to register for a panel discussion between ICIJ
reporter Will Fitzgibbon, tax officials from the U.S. and U.K. and other
experts about cracking down on professional intermediaries who enable tax
evasion and white collar crimes. The free
session is on Wed. March 24 at 4:45 pm CET (11:45 am EST).
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