WASHINGTON: The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on three senior officials of the Chinese Communist Party for alleged human rights abuses targeting ethnic and religious minorities China has detained in the western part of the country.
The decision to bar these senior officials from entering the US is the latest of a series of actions the Trump administration has taken against China as relations deteriorate over the coronavirus pandemic and trade.
“The United States will not stand idly by as the Chinese Communist Party carries out human rights abuses targeting Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs and members of other minority groups in Xinjiang, to include forced labor, arbitrary mass detention, and forced population control, and attempts to erase their culture and Muslim faith,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.
Pompeo said additional visa restrictions are being placed on other Chinese Communist Party officials believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, the unjust detention or abuse of Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs and members of other minority groups.
In recent years, the Chinese government has detained an estimated 1 million or more ethnic Turkic minorities. The ethnic minorities are held in internment camps and prisons where they are subjected to ideological discipline, forced to denounce their religion and language and physically abused. China has long suspected the Uighurs, who are mostly Muslim, of harboring separatist tendencies because of their distinct culture, language and religion.
China’s officially atheist Communist government at first denied the existence of the internment camps in Xinjiang, but now says they are vocational training facilities aimed at countering Muslim radicalism and separatist tendencies.
China says Xinjiang has long been its territory and claims it is bringing prosperity and development to the vast, resource-rich region. Many among Xinjiang’s native ethnic groups say they are being denied economic options in favor of migrants from elsewhere in China and that their Muslim faith and unique culture and language are being gradually eradicated.
Last December, Xinjiang authorities announced that the camps had closed and all the detainees had “graduated,” a claim difficult to corroborate independently given tight surveillance and restrictions on reporting in the region. Some Uighurs and Kazakhs have told the AP that their relatives have been released, but many others say their loved ones remain in detention, were sentenced to prison or transferred to forced labor in factories.
US sanctions Chinese officials over repression of minorities
https://arab.news/ya464
US sanctions Chinese officials over repression of minorities
Farmers block Paris streets to protest planned free trade agreement with South American nations
- The protest piles yet more pressure on President Emmanuel Macron and his government, a day before EU member states are expected to vote on the trade accord
PARIS: French farmers blocked roads into Paris and landmarks such as the Arc de Triomphe on Thursday, in protest against a sweeping trade deal the EU is due to sign with South American nations.
Farmers from the right-wing Coordination Rurale union called for the protests in Paris amid fears the planned free trade agreement with the Mercosur bloc will flood the EU with cheap food imports.
They also protested high costs and excessive local regulations and demanded an end to a government policy of culling herds of cows in response to a highly contagious cattle disease, which they consider unwarranted.
“We are between resentment and despair. We have a feeling of abandonment, with Mercosur being an example,” Stephane Pelletier, a senior member of the Coordination Rurale union, told Reuters beneath the Eiffel Tower.
The farmers overran police checkpoints to enter the city, driving along the Champs Elysees avenue and blocking the road around the Arc de Triomphe before dawn, before gathering in front of the National Assembly.
National Assembly President Yael Braun-Pivet was booed and jostled when she stepped outside of the assembly’s gates to talk with the Coordination Rurale protesters.
Dozens of tractors obstructed highways leading into the capital ahead of the morning rush hour, including the A13 leading into Paris from the western suburbs and Normandy, causing 150 km of traffic jams, the transport minister said.
Farmers from the FNSEA and young farmers’ unions joined them later at the Eiffel Tower in a calm demonstration.
“We’re going to import products from the rest of the world that don’t meet our standards — that’s not possible, that’s unacceptable. So we’re staying mobilized, we’re carrying on,” Arnaud Rousseau, president of the FNSEA farm union, told reporters, referring to the Mercosur deal.
The protest piles yet more pressure on President Emmanuel Macron and his government, a day before EU member states are expected to vote on the trade accord. Without a majority in parliament, any policy misstep by Macron risks a perilous vote of no confidence in the chamber.
France has long been a stiff opponent of the trade deal.
Even though Paris has won significant last-minute concessions, the trade deal is a political hot potato for the government, with municipal elections in March and the far-right polling strongly ahead of the 2027 elections to replace Macron.
“This treaty is still not acceptable,” government spokesperson Maud Bregeon told France Info radio.
French Farm Minister Annie Genevard said on Wednesday that, even if EU members backed the accord, France would continue to fight against it in the European Parliament, whose approval will also be required for the agreement to enter into force.
This week, the European Commission proposed making €45 billion of EU funding available to farmers earlier in the bloc’s next seven-year budget and agreed to cut import duties on some fertilizers in a bid to win over countries wavering in their support for Mercosur.
The deal is backed by countries such as Germany and Spain, and the Commission appeared closer to winning Italy’s backing.
Rome’s support for the deal would mean the EU had the votes needed to approve the trade accord even without French support.
A vote on the accord is expected on Friday.
