China is going through its darkest period for human rights since the Tiananmen Square massacre, Human Rights Watch said in its annual report.
But 2020 was also the year that world governments found “security in numbers” to push China’s crackdown policies, with less fear of retaliation, the report said.
The worsening persecution of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet, aimed at whistleblowers, the crackdown on Hong Kong and attempts to cover up the coronavirus outbreak are part of the deteriorating situation under President Xi Jinping, the organization said.
“This has been the darkest period for human rights in China since the 1989 massacre that ended the movement for democracy in Tiananmen Square,” said the report on human rights abuses worldwide.
“The Chinese government’s authoritarianism was on full display in 2020, while fighting the deadly coronavirus outbreak first reported in Wuhan province,” said the report, describing the initial cover-up of the outbreak by the authorities and the punishment of reporting doctors, including Li Wenliang and journalists like Zhang Zhan, who reported on the Wuhan blockade and the surveillance and harassment of the families of the victims of the virus.
At the same time, “Beijing’s repression – insisting on political loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party – has deepened across the country,” he said.
“In Xinjiang, Turkish Muslims continue to be arbitrarily detained on the basis of their identity, while others are subjected to forced labor, mass surveillance and political indoctrination. In Inner Mongolia, protests broke out in September, when educational authorities decided to replace Mongolian with Mandarin Chinese in various classes at schools in the region. ”
And in Tibet, officials continued to “severely restrict religious freedom, expression, movement and assembly, and failed to address popular concerns about mining and land grabbing by local officials, which often involve intimidation and illegal use of force by security forces. safety”.
Demand for political loyalty has also intensified in Hong Kong’s special administrative region. After more than six months of protests in 2019, Beijing implemented the internationally criticized national security law in the city, banning even benign acts of opposition such as crimes of secession, sedition, foreign collusion and terrorism. About 90 people have been arrested under the law since June.
Internet censorship, mass surveillance and efforts to “sinicularize” religion have also deepened in China, the report said. Prominent critics, human rights defenders and journalists were arrested, disappeared or forced into exile, many accused of “inciting subversion” or “creating fights and causing problems” – a common accusation against dissidents and activists.
“Since Xi Jinping came to power, repression has grown worse and worse, in all aspects of Chinese society you can see how the party is becoming more intolerant of any type of independent activity,” said HRW researcher Yaqiu Wang .
The 386-page report focused on China in large part because of the international response to the worsening repression in that country. HRW said the rest of the world was more confident in criticizing Beijing, already fearing retaliation.
Retaliation still took place: China and the United States entered a trade war, negotiated sanctions and new regulations on visas, diplomats and journalists and closed embassies. Australia was subject to harmful commercial tariffs and prohibitions after calling for a “robust” investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.
HRW criticized the EU’s response to China and, in particular, the finalization of a trade agreement with Beijing at the end of last year.
“If the EU had taken the end of forced labor in the Chinese province of Xinjiang seriously, it could have insisted before agreeing to the investment agreement,” said HRW chief Kenneth Roth.
But in 2020, many world governments found “security in numbers, reflecting Beijing’s inability to retaliate against the entire world,” said HRW. Few members of the Islamic Cooperation Organization – which in the past tended to support China – have supported Xinjiang’s policies, and several statements of condemnation have been produced at the UN.
The United States passed several laws targeting China’s abuses, while the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States broke up extradition treaties with the country because of the crackdown on Hong Kong.
“This growing international willingness to condemn the Chinese government forced him to respond,” said the report, and Beijing for the first time confirmed the number of Uighurs and other Turkish Muslims detained in Xinjiang, revealing that 1.3 million people had which is called “vocational training centers”.
Each UN statement was answered with statements in support of Beijing, which HRW said were “typically signed by many of the world’s worst human rights violators”, and appeared to involve economic leverage.
The HRW report said the setback was particularly notable for the US’s “peripheral” role, in the sense that the Trump administration was often not involved or had no credibility when it was.
“The lesson of the past few years for other governments is that they can make a big difference even without Washington. Even under a United States administration more favorable to rights, this broader collective defense of rights must be maintained ”.