BEIJING (AP) – China announced sanctions on British individuals and entities on Friday after the UK joined the EU and others in punishing Chinese officials accused of human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region. The movement was the opening salvo in its most recent vehement response to criticism and sanctions from the West.
A statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the Western bloc’s action was based on “nothing but lies and misinformation, flagrantly violates international law and the basic rules governing international relations, grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs and harms seriously affect China-UK relations. ”
Britain’s ambassador to China was summoned to a diplomatic protest, the statement said. Sanctioned individuals and groups would be prohibited from visiting Chinese territory and having financial transactions with Chinese citizens and institutions.
At a daily news conference, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying sparked a series of accusations against the United States, the United Kingdom, allied nations and parts of the Western media, saying they have collaborated to subvert unity and China’s development.
The sanctions against the Chinese authorities over Xinjiang are part of a plot designed to destabilize the region and reflect no real concern for the rights of Muslims, Hu said, saying Beijing’s response was necessary to “defend interests and dignity. from China”.
“For a long time, the United States, the United Kingdom and others felt free to say what they wanted, without allowing others to do the same,” said Hua. Those days are over and the West “will have to gradually get used to it,” said Hua.
The latest sanctions and the harsh tone of Hua’s comments reflect China’s increasingly harsh diplomacy under nationalist leader Xi Jinping, who has promised to defend China’s interests at all costs. In recent days, China has blocked the BBC’s already very limited broadcasts to the country and put two Canadians on trial in apparent retaliation for the arrest of an executive at Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.
China rejected all criticism of its policies in Xinjiang, along with its crackdown on opposition figures in Hong Kong and threats against Taiwan, the autonomous island democracy that China claims as its own territory. He ignored US sanctions against officials accused of crushing democracy in Hong Kong and angrily denounced a British plan to offer a path of residence and citizenship to millions of citizens in his former colony.
Hua opened his briefing with a video clip of a former aide to retired US Secretary of State Colin Powell, saying that the American military presence in Afghanistan, which shares a narrow border with China, was partly an effort to prevent the rise. from Beijing. She also indicated that the National Endowment for Democracy and the Central Intelligence Agency are working secretly to sow instability.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab denounced the sanctions and urged Chinese officials to allow UN representatives in Xinjiang to “verify the facts” if they want to “credibly refute allegations of human rights abuses”. China says diplomats are welcome in the region, but only under conditions imposed by Beijing.
China “sanctions its critics”, in contrast to the United Kingdom and the rest of the international community that “sanctions human rights abuses,” said Raab.
Nine British individuals and four institutions were placed on the sanctions list, including MP Iain Duncan Smith and the Conservative Party’s Human Rights Commission. Duncan Smith is a former leader of the Conservatives.
China’s sanctions are the latest measure in an increasingly fierce dispute over Xinjiang, where Beijing is accused of detaining more than 1 million members of Uighurs and other Muslim minority groups, using forced labor and imposing coercive measures to control birth.
Chinese state TV on Thursday called for a boycott of Swedish retail chain H&M, while Beijing attacked foreign clothing and footwear brands following Monday’s decision by the 27 nations of the European Union, the United States, Britain and Canada to impose financial and travel sanctions on four Chinese officials accused of abuses in Xinjiang. Cotton and other agricultural products are the main component of the local economy in the vast but sparsely populated Xinjiang.
Companies ranging from Nike to Burberry, with a well-established presence in China, were also targeted online, with some Chinese celebrities saying they were signing sponsorship deals.
“China is firmly determined to safeguard its national sovereignty, security and development interests, and warns the UK not to go any further in the wrong direction. Otherwise, China will react resolutely ”, said the Foreign Ministry.
Other members of the Foreign Ministry’s sanctions list included politicians, academics and human rights activists Tom Tugendhat, Neil O’Brien, David Alton, Tim Loughton, Nusrat Ghani, Helena Kennedy, Geoffrey Nice and Joanne Nicola Smith Finley. The China Research Group, established by a group of conservative lawmakers, the independent research group Uyghur Tribunal and Essex Court Chambers, a law firm that also described Chinese policies towards minorities in Xinjiang as crimes against humanity and genocide, were also listed.
Ghani, a parliamentarian of Muslim descent, said she “will not be intimidated” by Beijing’s “extraordinary” action.
“This is a warning to all democratic countries and legislators that we will not be able to conduct our day-to-day business without China sanctioning us for just trying to expose what is happening in Xinjiang and the abuses against Uighurs,” she said BBC Radio.
Several other departments of the Chinese government and state-run media have come together to condemn Western sanctions.
The Xinjiang government issued a long statement promoting economic growth, political stability and population growth in the region and pointing to violence and human rights violations in the USA, Britain, Canada and elsewhere and the chaos caused by military interventions in Iraq and Libya.
“Any conspiracy to undermine Xinjiang’s prosperity and development … will certainly be doomed to shameful failure,” the statement said.
The Communist Party of China and nominally independent nationalists who operate mainly online have a long history of attacks on foreign companies and even entire countries seen as an insult to China’s national dignity or harming the country’s central interests.
South Korean retail giant Lotte saw its business in China destroyed after providing land for a U.S. air defense system Beijing opposed, while relations with Norway were strained for years after the Nobel Peace Prize it was awarded to pro-democracy writer Liu Xiaobo, who died in a Chinese prison in 2017.
___
The AP Pan Pylas journalist in London contributed to this report.