BEIJING (AP) – China announced sanctions against British people and entities on Friday after Britain joined the EU and others in sanctioning Chinese officials accused of human rights violations in the Xinjiang region. This move was the opening rescue in its latest full response to Western criticism and sanctions.
A statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the Western bloc’s action was based on “nothing but lies and misinformation, blatantly violates international law and the basic rules governing international relations, seriously interferes in China’s internal affairs and seriously undermines relations between China and the United Kingdom. ”
The British ambassador to China has been summoned for a diplomatic protest, the statement said. Sanctioned persons and groups will be denied access to Chinese territory and will be barred from financial transactions with Chinese citizens and institutions.
At a daily news conference, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying unleashed a series of accusations against the United States, the United Kingdom, allied nations and parts of the Western media, saying they had collaborated to undermine unity and China’s development.
Sanctions against Chinese officials in Xinjiang are part of an elaborate plot to destabilize the region and do not reflect any real concern for Muslim rights, Hu said, saying Beijing’s response is necessary to “defend China’s interests and dignity.”
“For a long time, the United States, Britain and others felt free to say whatever they liked without allowing others to do the same,” Hua said. Those days are over and the West “will have to get used to it gradually,” Hua said.
The latest sanctions and the harsh tone of Hua’s comments reflect China’s increasingly harsh diplomacy under nationalist Xi Jinping, who has pledged to support China’s interests at all costs. In recent days, China has blocked very limited BBC broadcasts in the country and sued two Canadians in apparent retribution for the country’s detention of an executive of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.
China has rejected all criticism of its Xinjiang policies, along with repression of Hong Kong opposition figures and threats against Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy China claims to be its own territory. He dropped US sanctions against officials accused of stirring up democracy in Hong Kong and angrily denounced a British plan to provide a path to residence and citizenship for millions of citizens of his former colony.
Hua opened his briefing with a video of a former assistant to retired US Secretary of State Colin Powell, saying that the US military presence in Afghanistan, which has a narrow border with China, is partly an effort to prevent the rise. Beijing. She also called the National Fund for Democracy and the Central Intelligence Agency working secretly to sow instability.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab denounced the sanctions and called on the Chinese authorities to allow UN officials in Xinjiang to “verify the facts” if they want to “credibly reject claims of human rights violations.” China says diplomats are welcome in the region, but only under Beijing’s conditions.
China “sanctions its critics,” unlike Britain and the rest of the international community, which “sanctions human rights abuses,” Raab said.
Nine British people and four institutions were included in the sanctions list, including MP Iain Duncan Smith and the Conservative Party’s Human Rights Committee. Duncan Smith is a former Conservative leader.
China’s sanctions are the latest in an increasingly bitter move on Xinjiang, where Beijing is accused of detaining more than 1 million members of Uighur and other Muslim minority groups, using forced labor and imposing coercive control measures. of births.
Chinese state television 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 European Union in 27 countries, the United States, Britain and Canada to impose Travel and financial sanctions on four Chinese officials blamed the abuses in Xinjiang. Cotton and other agricultural products form a major component of the local economy in Xinjiang, which is vast but sparsely populated.
Companies from Nike to Burberry that have a well-established presence in China have also been targeted online, with some Chinese celebrities saying they are breaking approval agreements.
“China is firmly committed to protecting its national sovereignty, security and development interests and warns the British side not to go the wrong way. Otherwise, China will resolutely react further, “the foreign ministry said.
Others on the Foreign Ministry’s sanctions list included politicians, scientists 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 Chinese research group, set up by a group of Conservative MPs, the independent research group Uyghur Tribunal and the Essex Court Chambers, a law firm that also described Chinese policies towards Xinjiang minorities as crimes against humanity and genocide, were also listed.
Ghani, a member of parliament who is of Muslim descent, said she would “not be intimidated” by Beijing’s “extraordinary” action.
“This is a wake-up call for all democratic countries and parliamentarians that we will not be able to carry out our daily activities without China sanctioning us just for trying to expose what is happening in Xinjiang and Uyghur abuse,” she said. BBC Radio.
Numerous other Chinese government departments and state media have joined in condemning Western sanctions.
The Xinjiang government issued a lengthy statement promoting economic growth, political stability and population growth in the region and pointing to violence and human rights violations in the United States, Britain, Canada and elsewhere and the chaos of military interventions in Iraq and Libya.
“Any plot to undermine Xinjiang’s prosperity and development … will certainly be doomed to shameful failure,” the statement said.
China’s ruling Communist Party and nominal independent nationalists, which operate mainly online, have a long history of attacks by foreign companies and even entire countries considered to be insulting China’s national dignity or affecting the country’s main interests.
South Korean retail giant Lotte has seen its business in China destroyed after providing ground for an American air defense system that Beijing opposed, while relations with Norway have strained for years after the award. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to pro-democracy writer Liu Xiaobo, who died in a Chinese prison in 2017.
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AP journalist Pan Pylas from London contributed to the report.