China has announced retaliatory sanctions against senior British politicians, including the former leader of the Conservative Party, for “spreading lies and malicious misinformation” about the Xinjiang region.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced in a statement on Friday that it targets nine individuals and four entities in the UK
The nine sanctioned individuals are former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, party political advisor Neil O’Brien, chairman of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee Tom Tugendhat, David Alton, Tim Loughton, Nusrat Ghani, Helena Kennedy, Geoffrey Nice and Joanne Nicola Smith Finley.
Individuals and their relatives are prohibited from entering China or doing business with Chinese citizens and institutions. Any assets they have in the Asian country will also be frozen, which statement said. The four entities affected are the China Research Group of UK lawmakers, the Conservative Party’s Human Rights Commission, the Uyghur Court and the Essex Court Chambers.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab responded in a statement. “It says a lot that, while the UK joins the international community to punish those responsible for human rights abuses, the Chinese government sanctions its critics.
“If Beijing wants to credibly refute allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, it must allow the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights full access to verify the truth. “
China’s Foreign Ministry said the sanctions previously imposed by London on China for allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang were “based on nothing but lies and misinformation” and “grossly interfered in China’s internal affairs”.
The message being sent to the UK and Europe is that “by siding with the US, they will not do themselves any good,” said Wang Yiwei, director of the Center for European Studies at Renmin University in Beijing. China’s goal is to eliminate the influence of these individuals, which removes them as obstacles to future cooperation, he said.
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Duncan Smith promised to use the sanction as an “emblem of honor”, posting on Twitter that it was the duty of lawmakers to denounce the “human rights abuse” and “genocide” of the Chinese government.
Ghani said on Twitter that she would not be “intimidated or silenced”. She told BBC radio: “This is a warning to all democratic countries and legislators that we will not be able to conduct our business without China sanctioning us for just trying to expose what is happening in Xinjiang and the abuses against Uighurs”.
Earlier this week, the United Kingdom joined the United States, Canada and the European Union in imposing sanctions against China for alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Western governments accuse China of interning until 1 million Muslim Uighurs in camps and forcing them to work, while forcing children from all over the region to attend boarding schools.
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The United States and lawmakers in Canada and the Netherlands have labeled Beijing’s actions in the region bordering Central Asia as genocide.
China rejects the accusations, saying it is building infrastructure to boost the economy, providing jobs and educating children.
Beijing “reserves the right to take further action,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular meeting on Friday in Beijing.
“The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and the European Union did this in the first place,” she said. “What China did was legitimate, fair and legitimate self-defense.”
Multinationals are becoming entangled in the controversy, with Chinese social media users calling for boycotts of Hennes & Mauritz AB and Nike Inc. for not using cotton grown in Xinjiang.
– With the help of John Liu, Jing Li, Stanley James and Emily Ashton
(Updates with comments from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China.)