China hits back with sanctions for ‘malicious lies’ over Xinjiang
China has hit British institutions and individuals, including former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, with sanctions in response to similar moves by the UK over the treatment of people in Xinjiang.
Britain, the US, Canada and the European Union on Monday slapped sanctions on Chinese officials deemed responsible for human rights abuses in the country’s autonomous north-west territory.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced a package of travel bans and asset freezes against four senior officials and the state-run Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Public Security Bureau.
Mr Raab said the abuse of the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang was “one of the worst human rights crises of our time” and the international community “cannot simply look the other way”.
China’s ministry of foreign affairs claimed yesterday that the move by Mr Raab was “based on nothing but lies and disinformation, flagrantly breaches international law and basic norms governing international relations, grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs and severely undermines China-uk relations”.
The ministry said it had sanctioned nine people and four British institutions “that maliciously spread lies and disinformation”.
Mr Duncan Smith, Labour’s Baroness Helena Kennedy, Tory MP Neil O’brien, Lord David Alton, Conservative MPS Tim Loughton and Nusrat Ghani, barrister Geoffrey Nice, Joanne Nicola Smith Finley and chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee Tom Tugendhat were the individuals sanctioned.
The groups were the China Research Group, the Conservativeparty human rights comm is si on,UyghurTri bun al and Essex Court Chambers.
“As of today, the individuals concerned and their immediate family members are prohibitedfrom entering the mainland, Hong Kong and Macao of China, their property in China will be frozen, and Chinese citizens and institutions will be prohibited from doing business with them,” the ministry said, adding it “reserves the right to take further measures”.
The ministry also said it had summoned the UK’S ambassador to China, Caroline Wilson, “to lodge solemn representations, expressing firm opposition and strong condemnation”. Meanwhile, the chief of the UK'S cyber security agency has warned that China's technological might will change the world in a more fundamental way than Russia.
The two countries are among four nations of particular concern in cyberspace, alongside North Korea and Iran.
In her first major speech as chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre – part of GCHQ – Lindy Cameron said Russia "poses the most acute and immediate threat" to the UK but China's size, scale and technological ambition is also being watched.
“The thing we're most interested in, of course, is China's future role in technology actually, so we're clear-eyed about their ambitions in technology in particular and I think interested in the role they have in the market as much as the potential threat," she said.