BEIJING (AP) – China on Friday announced sanctions on British people and entities after the UK joined the EU and others for sanctioning Chinese officials accused of human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region. The movement was the initial salvation in its last total response to criticism and sanctions from the West.
A statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the Western bloc’s measure was based on “nothing but lies and misinformation, blatantly violates international law and the basic rules governing international relations, and seriously interferes in the internal affairs of China and severely undermines China-UK relations. ”
Britain’s ambassador to China had been summoned for a diplomatic protest, according to the statement. Sanctioned individuals and groups would be prohibited from visiting Chinese territory and would be prohibited from conducting financial transactions with Chinese citizens and institutions.
In a daily briefing, 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 subvert the unity and development of China.
Sanctions against Chinese officials over Xinjiang are part of a conspiracy plot to destabilize the region and do not reflect any real concern for Muslim rights, Hu said, according to Beijing’s response was necessary to “defend the interests and dignity of the people.” China “.
“For a long period of time, the United States, the United Kingdom and others have felt free to say what they want without allowing others to do the same,” Hua said. These days are over and the West “will have to get used to it little by little,” Hua said.
The latest sanctions and harsh tone of Hua’s comments reflect China’s increasingly harsh diplomacy under nationalist leader Xi Jinping, who has pledged to defend China’s interests at all costs. In recent days, China has blocked BBC broadcasts already very limited in the country and has tried two Canadians as apparent remuneration for the arrest of an executive of the country’s Chinese telecommunications giant.
China has rejected all criticism of its policies in Xinjiang, along with its repression of opposition figures in Hong Kong and threats against Taiwan, China’s self-governing island democracy as its own territory. He has lifted US sanctions against officials accused of defeating democracy in Hong Kong and has angrily denounced a British plan to offer a path to residence and citizenship to millions of citizens of his former colony.
Hua opened his briefing with a video clip of a former aide to retired U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, which shares a close border with the U.S. China, was partly an effort to counter Beijing’s rise. He also named the National Endowment for Democracy and the Central Intelligence Agency as undercover workers to sow instability.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab denounced the sanctions and urged Chinese authorities to allow UN representatives in Xinjiang to “check the facts” if they want to “credibly refute allegations of abuse by the United Nations.” human rights”. 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, which “sanctions human rights abuses,” Raab said.
Nine British individuals and four institutions were included in the sanctions list, including Member of Parliament Iain Duncan Smith and the Conservative Party’s Human Rights Commission. Duncan Smith is a former Conservative leader.
China’s sanctions are the latest step in an increasingly bitter row over Xinjiang, where Beijing is accused of detaining more than a million members of Uyghur and other Muslim minority groups, using forced labor and imposing coercive birth control measures.
Chinese state television on Thursday called for a boycott of Swedish retail chain H&M as Beijing attacked foreign clothing and footwear brands following Monday’s decision by 27 countries in the European Union, the United States, Britain and Canada. to impose financial and travel sanctions on four Chinese. officials blamed the abuses in Xinjiang. Cotton and other agricultural products are an important component of the local economy in the vast but sparsely populated Xinjiang.
Companies ranging from Nike to Burberry, which have well-established presences in China, were also targeted online, and some Chinese celebrities said they were disrupting accession agreements.
“China is firmly committed to safeguarding its national sovereignty, security and development interests, and warns the British side not to go any further down the wrong path. Otherwise, China will take decisive reactions,” he said. the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Others on the Foreign Ministry’s sanctions list included politicians, scholars 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, set up by a group of Conservative MPs, the Uyghur Court independent investigation group and the Essex Court Chambers, a law firm that also described Chinese policies towards minorities in Xinjiang as crimes against humanity and genocide.
Ghani, a member of parliament who is of Muslim heritage, said he “will not be intimidated” by Beijing’s “extraordinary” measure.
“This is a wake-up call for all democratic countries and legislators that we will not be able to do our day to day without China sanctioning us just for trying to expose what is happening in Xinjiang and Uyghur abuse,” he said. he said. BBC Radio.
Many other Chinese government departments and state media joined in condemning Western sanctions.
The Xinjiang government issued a lengthy statement supporting economic growth, political stability and population growth in the region and pointing out violence and human rights violations in the US, Britain, Canada and elsewhere. and the chaos caused by military interventions in Iraq and Libya.
“Any plot to undermine Xinjiang’s prosperity and development … will no doubt be doomed to shameful failure,” the statement said.
The ruling Communist Party of China and nominally independent nationalists operating mainly online have a long history of attacking foreign companies and even entire countries seen as insulting China’s national dignity or harming China’s basic interests. country.
South Korean retail giant Lotte saw its business destroyed in China after providing land for a U.S. air defense system that Beijing opposed, while relations with Norway strained for years after 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 in London contributed to this report.