Eduardo González
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs met last Wednesday with the Chinese ambassador in Madrid, Wu Haitao, to convey Spain’s “firm rejection” of the “disproportionate” measures adopted by Beijing in response to EU sanctions for human rights violations in the Xinjiang region.
According to Foreign Ministry sources, the Director General for North America, Eastern Europe and Asia-Pacific of the Ministry, Ana María Sálomon, met on March 2 with Wu Haitao to convey to him the “firm rejection of the disproportionate sanctions” adopted by Beijing. Unlike what happened in other EU countries or in the United Kingdom, the Chinese ambassador was not summoned by the Ministry, but the meeting was “arranged by the two parties”, as Foreign Ministry sources told The Diplomat.
During the meeting, the Foreign Ministry representative affirmed that the European sanctions are in accordance with international law and were not directed against China, but against specific officials for their direct involvement in the repression of Uyghurs. She also warned that Beijing’s response is contrary to the “right to freedom of expression of academics, parliamentarians and thinkers” and could damage China’s image in Spain because Spanish public opinion follows “very closely the situation in Xinjiang”.
For his part, the Chinese ambassador said during the same meeting that the European restrictions are based on “lies and misinformation about Xinjiang, ignore and distort the facts, and brutally interfere in China’s internal affairs”, the Chinese Embassy in Madrid reported. “These actions are a flagrant violation of international law and the basic norms governing international relations, and therefore seriously damage relations between China and the EU”, said the ambassador, who urged Spain and the EU to be “aware of the seriousness of their mistakes”, to take “measures to rectify them”, to stop “lecturing others on human rights” and to avoid “further intervention in the internal affairs of other countries”.
Last Monday, the EU Foreign Affairs Council again used its Global Sanctions Regime for human rights violations, created in December 2020, to sanction a number of individuals and entities responsible for serious human rights violations and abuses in China, North Korea, Libya, Russia, South Sudan and Eritrea. In the case of China, those sanctioned are officials involved in arbitrary mass arrests of Uighurs in the Xinjiang region of China. These are the first sanctions against China since 1989, when the then European Community banned arms exports to the Asian giant because of the Tiananmen massacre. In addition, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada yesterday backed the EU’s decision and announced the imposition of their own sanctions on Chinese leaders.
As expected, Xi Jinping’s government reacted harshly against sanctions, which amount to “serious interference in China’s internal affairs”, and responded by approving similar measures against a dozen European citizens, including five MEPs, three national MPs and two academics, and against four entities, including the EU Council’s Political and Security Committee, the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights, the Danish Alliance of Democracies Foundation and the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Germany.
