China has announced retaliatory sanctions against older British politicians, including the former ruling Conservative Party leader for “maliciously spreading lies and misinformation” about its Xinjiang region.
Chinese Foreign Ministry announced in a statement on Friday that it targets nine individuals and four entities from Great Britain
The nine people sanctioned are former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, party political adviser 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 .
People and their relatives are prohibited from entering China or trading with Chinese citizens and institutions. All the assets they hold in the Asian nation will also be frozen statement said. The four entities affected are the Chinese Research Group of British MPs, the Conservative Party’s Human Rights Commission, the Uyghur Tribunal and the Chambers of the Essex Tribunal.
British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab denied in a statement. “It is widely said that while Britain joins the international community in sanctioning those responsible for human rights violations, the Chinese government is sanctioning its critics.
“If Beijing wants to credibly reject allegations of human rights violations in Xinjiang, it should give the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights full access to verify the truth. “
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the sanctions that London had previously imposed on China on allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang were based on “only lies and misinformation” and “seriously interfered in China’s internal affairs.”
The message to the United Kingdom and Europe is that “joining the US will not do them any good,” said Wang Yiwei, director of the Center for European Studies at Beijing’s Renmin University. 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 has vowed to carry the sanction as a “badge of honor”, posting on Twitter that it is the duty of lawmakers to denounce the “abuse of human rights” 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 wake-up call for all democratic countries and parliamentarians that we will not be able to work without China sanctioning us just for trying to expose what is happening in Xinjiang and Uyghur abuse. ”.
Earlier this week, Britain joined the US, Canada and the European Union in imposing sanctions on China over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Western governments accuse China of internment up to 1 million Uighur Muslims in the camps and force them to work, while forcing children in the region to go to boarding schools.
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The US and lawmakers in Canada and the Netherlands have labeled Beijing’s actions in the region bordering Central Asia as genocide.
China denies the allegations, saying it is building infrastructure to boost the economy, provide jobs and educate children.
Beijing “reserves the right to take further action,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular meeting in Beijing on Friday.
“The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and the European Union have caused this in the first place,” she said. “What China did was a legitimate and legitimate self-defense.”
Multinationals are becoming caught in the controversy, Chinese social media users demanding a boycott Hennes & Mauritz AB and Nike Inc. because he did not use cotton grown in Xinjiang.
– With the assistance of John Liu, Jing Li, Stanley James and Emily Ashton
(Updates with comments from China’s Foreign Ministry.)