Asia News – 22 March 2022
Beijing (AsiaNews) – “While we understand that the main topic of discussions will be the Ukraine crisis and the Chinese government’s position on it, we urge you to dedicate adequate time to also discuss those authorities’ assaults on human rights both within and increasingly outside China’s borders” reads an appeal made to the European Commission and the EU Council by a group of humanitarian organisations ahead of the EU-China summit on 1 April. Among the signatories are groups such as Human Rights Watch, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, World Uyghur Congress and International Campaign for Tibet.
The promoters of the document stress that their concerns are in line with what Josep Borrell said at the recent Munich Security Conference. There, the European foreign policy chief spoke of the need to resist the “revisionist campaign” by Beijing and other governments against human rights and international institutions.
Since the last Sino-European meeting in December 2020, humanitarian groups recall providing further information on the mass atrocities committed by the Chinese regime against Uyghurs and other Turkic-speaking communities in Xinjiang. The same applies to Beijing’s policies aimed at eliminating the cultural, linguistic and religious rights of Tibetans and suppressing the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
Activists also denounce the government’s increased use of hi-tech surveillance systems to monitor the Chinese population and the systematic persecution of human rights lawyers. Beijing’s efforts to undermine international mechanisms by which the Chinese leadership could be forced to answer to the United Nations were also targeted.