The European Union (EU) announced on Monday a list of four Chinese officials and one entity to be sanctioned in response to the persecution of the Xinjiang Uighur minority by the Chinese Communist Party. In response, China’s Foreign Ministry immediately took countermeasures, announcing additional sanctions against 10 people and four entities from the EU.
The EU announced on the 22nd sanctions against Zhu Hailun, former secretary of the Political and Legal Committee, Wang Mingshan, member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Wang Junzheng, political commissar of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, Chen Mingguo, head of the Public Security Department of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and one entity of the Public Security Bureau of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. This is also the first Time that the European Union has imposed sanctions on China since the June 4 Tiananmen Incident in 1989, when an arms embargo was imposed on China.
According to the official Chinese media Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese Foreign Ministry later denounced: “The EU has imposed unilateral sanctions on Chinese individuals and entities on the pretext of the so-called Xinjiang human rights issue based on lies and false information. This move recklessly ignores facts, reverses black and white, violently interferes in China’s internal affairs, blatantly violates international law and basic norms of international relations, and seriously damages China-EU relations, to which China expresses its resolute opposition and strong condemnation.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry also announced additional counter-sanctions, including the head of the European Parliament’s delegation on China relations, Reinhard Bütikofer, MEPs Michael Gahler, Miriam Lexmann, Raphaël Glucksmann, Vice-Chair of the European Parliament’s Human Rights Group Glucksmann, Ilhan Kyuchyuk, Sjoerd Wiemer Sjoerdsma, Samuel Cogolati, Dovile Sakaliene, a German scholar who studied the Xinjiang concentration camps, and the German researcher Zheng Zheng. Adrian Zenz, a German academic who studied the Xinjiang concentration camps, and Bjorn Jerden, a Swedish academic, for a total of 10 people.
The other four sanctioned entities are the Committee on Politics and Security of the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament’s Sub-Committee on Human Rights, the Mercator Center for Chinese Studies in Germany, and the Danish Democratic Union Foundation.
China said that the persons on the sanctions list and their families are prohibited from entering China, Hong Kong and Macau, and that they and their affiliated companies and institutions have been restricted from communicating with China.
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