EU issues sanctions over Uyghur rights violations

By Agnes Szucs

BRUSSELS (AA) – EU foreign ministers agreed on Monday to impose sanctions over human rights violations against the Uyghur minority.

The bloc decided to impose restrictive measures against four Chinese individuals and one company for abuses and the large-scale arbitrary detentions of Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region.

According to the decision, four high-ranking Chinese party officials -- Hailun Zhu, Junzheng Wang, Mingshan Wang and Mingguo Chen -- cannot enter the EU’s territory and their assets in the bloc will be frozen for being “responsible for serious human rights violations in China, in particular large scale arbitrary detentions and degrading treatment inflicted upon Uyghurs and people from other Muslim ethnic minorities, as well as systematic violations of their freedom of religion or belief.”

Hailun Zhu, as Xinjiang’s former secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, was the architect of the “large-scale surveillance, detention and indoctrination program targeting Uyghurs and people from other Muslim ethnic minorities.”

Junzheng Wangs, as party secretary and political commissar oversaw “the systemic use of Uyghurs and people from other Muslim ethnic minorities as a forced workforce, in particular in cotton fields.”

Mingshan Wang and Mingguo Chen, as former director and deputy party secretary and director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau, "introduced a big data program used to track millions of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region and flag those deemed potentially threatening to be sent to detention camps.”

With the same decision, EU foreign ministers also ordered an asset freeze and a travel ban on seven more individuals and three more companies from Russia, North-Korea, Libya, South Sudan and Eritrea.

The measures were adopted in the framework of the EU’s Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime.

On March 2, the EU adopted sanctions for the first time under this scheme. The measures targeted four high-ranking Russian officials involved in the sentencing and detention of opposition figure Alexey Navalny.

The sanctions regime, adopted in 2020, enables the EU to target individuals, entities and other bodies responsible for serious human rights violations.

The regime implies travel ban and asset freeze for those responsible for human right abuses. EU prohibits European individuals and firms to make funds available to those listed.

In a separate decision, EU foreign ministers imposed restrictions on over 11 members of Myanmar’s military junta over the coup and ensuing repression of civil protesters.