Will international sanctions on China have an effect in solving the Uighur crisis?

[Last Monetarist]

I personally think that it will create more problems domestically for muslims in Xinjiang, given the vindictive nature of the CCP.

However, it's a complete indictment of the countries in the west which had turned a blind eye to conditions and profited off the crisis by accessing cheap slave labour. It's another case of too little too late, and has potential to exacerbate the crisis.

 

[JaDed]

Seems Europe is back in bed with America after Trump fiasco.
Just read that after 30 years Europe has done this, and Britain is doing the same.

 

[JaDed]

True about the slave labor imho its Japanese that made China so strong, they were then ones who backed China after Tinanmen square massacre by keeping the manufacturing still in China..

article on same:

https://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0007020160

 

[Last Monetarist]

Seems Europe is back in bed with America after Trump fiasco.
Just read that after 30 years Europe has done this, and Britain is doing the same.

Politicians have finally woken up to the threat posed by the CCP to global geopolitics and national security in Europe and North America. They have been complacent and riddled with naivete for the past 25 years, and in many cases closely tied with the CCP's corporate lobbyists.

The virus has laid bare the fragility of outsourced supply chains. There are still so many convoluted linkages from which it will take decades for countries to extricate themselves. This is without getting into tinfoil hat territory and the possibility of the virus not being a complete coincidence.

The Uighur crisis is one of the few areas of leverage that the west can still use, but its impact is limited in value because unfortunately the Uighurs are not the right kind of muslims nor are they culturally important for any mistreatment to create many fissures in western society.

 

[sweep_shot]

Uighurs: Western countries sanction China over rights abuses

Several Western countries have imposed sanctions on officials in China over rights abuses against the mostly Muslim Uighur minority group.

China has detained Uighurs at camps in the north-west region of Xinjiang, where allegations of torture, forced labour and sexual abuse have emerged.

The sanctions were introduced as a coordinated effort by the European Union, UK, US and Canada.

China responded with its own sanctions on European officials.

It has denied the allegations of abuse, claiming the camps are "re-education" facilities used to combat terrorism.

But UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the treatment of Uighurs amounted to "appalling violations of the most basic human rights".

The EU has not imposed new sanctions on China over human rights abuses since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, when troops in Beijing opened fire on pro-democracy protesters.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56487162.

 

[Last Monetarist]

So China have announced reciprocal sanctions on a few MEPs, which has prompted the French to summon the Chinese ambassador for a dressing down.

I do feel that Europe and America will need to be fully united to combat the CCP. Let's see how long that unity can last, the Chinese are certainly patient enough to wait and retaliate at a more opportune moment.

 

[Varun]

Good stuff by Europe.

Put the Jins and Pings in some hot water for giving us the wonderful gift of 2020 (and 2021).

Nothing will change for the Uyghurs though. If even Pakistan can't relate to them, then nobody can.

 

[MenInG]

Facebook has removed a group of China-based hackers it says targeted members of the Uighur community living abroad.

It said hackers used malicious websites and apps to infect devices and allow for remote surveillance, with journalists and activists targeted.

A majority of the cyber attacks didn't happen directly on Facebook but used the social media platform to share links to infected sites.

This is not the first time hackers have been accused of such activity.

The Uighurs are originally from the north-western region of Xinjiang in China and those targeted are currently living in places including Turkey, the United States, Australia and Canada.

"This activity had the hallmarks of a well-resourced and persistent operation, while obfuscating who's behind it," Facebook's Mike Dvilyanski, head of cyber espionage investigations, and Nathaniel Gleicher, head of security policy, said in a blog post.

Facebook said it removed accounts - which totalled fewer than 100 - it found to have been created by the hackers, a group known as Earth Empusa or Evil Eye.

It believes fewer than 500 accounts were targeted.

Facebook says some of the ways the group infected devices included:

creating fake Uighur-themed apps for the Android app store, including a prayer app and a dictionary app
posing on Facebook as journalists, students, human rights advocates or members of the Uighur community, building trust and tricking them into clicking on malicious links
creating look-alike websites for popular Uighur and Turkish news websites

The Chinese Embassy in Washington has yet to comment.

China is facing mounting criticism from around the world over its treatment of the mostly Muslim Uighur population in Xinjiang.

Rights groups believe China has detained more than a million Uighurs over the past few years.

China denies allegations of abuse, saying camps in the region are "re-education" facilities used to combat terrorism.

BBC

 

[MenInG]

China has sanctioned individuals and organisations in the UK who it said "maliciously spread lies and disinformation" - days after the British government imposed sanctions on Chinese officials for alleged gross human rights violations in Xinjiang.

Members of parliament including former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith and Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Tugendhat, were among those named by China's foreign ministry.

Organisations including the China Research Group of MPs and Essex Court Chambers, which published a legal opinion describing China's actions in Xinjiang as genocide, were also included in the sanctions.

Iain Duncan Smith described the sanctions as "a badge of honour".

On Twitter, he wrote: "It's our duty to call out the Chinese Govt's human rights abuse in Hong Kong & the genocide of the Uighurs.

"Those of us who live free lives under the rule of law must speak for those who have no voice."

On Monday, the UK joined the EU, Canada and the US in sanctioning China - the first time the UK had imposed asset freezes and travel bans on Chinese officials.

Boris Johnson warns against 'new Cold War on China' as he comes under pressure from Conservative MPs
China immediately imposed retaliatory sanctions on the EU, including on members of the European Parliament.

But it seems to have been relatively surprised by the British sanctions, taking several days longer to respond.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the UK sanctions were "based on nothing but lies and disinformation" and that the move "severely undermines China-UK relations".

The spokesperson added that they had summoned the British Ambassador to China to express their opposition.

The sanctioned individuals and entities in the UK are prohibited from entering mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, and Chinese citizens and institutions are forbidden from doing business with them.

Activists and UN rights experts say around a million Uighur Muslims and other minorities have been detained in Xinjiang, in the north west of China.

The other British individuals facing sanctions are Tory MPs Neil O'Brien, Tim Loughton, and Nusrat Ghani; peers Lord Alton and Baroness Kennedy; lawyer Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, and academic Jo Smith Finley.

In their legal opinion published in February, lawyers from Essex Court Chambers wrote: "There is a very credible case that crimes against humanity of enslavement, torture, rape, enforced sterilisation and persecution and the crime of genocide, are being committed against the Uighur population".

China has repeatedly denied the accusations and says the camps are voluntary training centres.

https://news.sky.com/story/beijing-...-british-politicians-to-its-own-list-12256981

 

[sweep_shot]

BBC China correspondent John Sudworth moves to Taiwan after threats

The BBC's Beijing correspondent John Sudworth has left China and moved to Taiwan following pressure and threats from the Chinese authorities.

Sudworth, who has won awards for his reporting on the treatment of the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang region, left Beijing with his family.

The BBC says it is proud of his reporting and he remains its China correspondent.

China has denounced the BBC's coverage of Xinjiang.

Sudworth, who was based in China for nine years, said he moved to Taiwan after it became increasingly difficult to remain in China.

He and his family were followed to the airport and into the check-in area by plainclothes police officers. His wife, Yvonne Murray, reports on China for the Irish public broadcaster RTÉ.

Sudworth says he and his team faced surveillance, threats of legal action, obstruction and intimidation wherever they tried to film.

His reporting colleagues are still in Beijing, and he says he intends to continue his reporting from Taiwan.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said the authorities had not been given prior notice.

"Only in recent days when we were faced with the task of renewing Sudworth's press card did we learn that Sudworth left without saying goodbye. After he left the country, he didn't by any means inform the relevant departments nor provide any reason why," Hua Chunying told a news conference in Beijing.

In its statement, the BBC said: "John's reporting has exposed truths the Chinese authorities did not want the world to know."

The number of international media organisations reporting from China is shrinking. Last year China expelled correspondents for the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, among others.

And in September 2020, the last two reporters working in China for Australian media flew home after a five-day diplomatic standoff.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club (FCC) of China says foreign journalists are "being caught up in diplomatic rows out of their control".

"Abuse of Sudworth and his colleagues at the BBC forms part of a larger pattern of harassment and intimidation that obstructs the work of foreign correspondents in China and exposes their Chinese news assistants to growing pressure," the FCC said in a statement posted on Twitter.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-56586655.

 

[sweep_shot]

It appears as though the Chinese government has invented a French journalist in a bid to help combat genocide allegations.

Over the weekend, China’s state-owned television channel CGTN presented an article that is alleged to have been written by a French journalist called Laurène Beaumond.

In the article, Beaumond defended the country, which has been accused of violating every single article of the UN’s Genocide Convention over its treatment of the Uighur community in Xinjiang.

Over the past few months we’ve seen mounting evidence of horrific systemic abuse committed against the Islamic minority community within China’s detention centres, prompting both the United States and the UK, among other countries, to issue sanctions.

The so-called French journalist, who CGTN alleges completed a double degree in history and archaeology from the University of Paris, denied the accusations of genocide within the camps and vowed to fight countries like the US and the UK on the issue.

Beaumond allegedly moved to China seven years ago, and claims to have relatives in Urumchi, which is the capital of Xinjiang, where the detention camps are.

‘I had the opportunity to visit the region many times between 2014 and 2019, and I do not recognise the Xinjiang they describe me in the one I know,’ he reportedly wrote in his article.

However, after hearing of a French national speaking out on the contentious issue, French newspaper Le Monde decided to do a little bit of digging, only to conclude that Laurène Beaumond does not exist.

Le Monde conducted an investigation into whether a journalist of this name ever trained as a reporter in France, where he would have needed to complete a masters in journalism and worked in a Paris newsroom to qualify.

Because of the way the industry works in France, the vast majority of news corporations are registered with a professional commission, which gives out official press passes with individual registration numbers to journalists.

According to the newspaper, there is no record of such a journalist ever existing in France, despite the fact that the state-owned news station in China claimed he worked at several different media companies before making the move to Beijing.

Perhaps even more suspicious is the fact that the language Beaumond uses is incredibly similar to that used within the Beijing regime, when referring to the genocide accusations, leading to the paper concluding the so-called journalist has been completely fabricated by the Chinese government.

Source: https://www.unilad.co.uk/news/chine...o-defend-against-uighur-genocide-allegations/.