The feud between the West and China deepens as sanctions continue

This appeared in The Millennial Source

For the UK and the EU, the sanctions are part of the mounting global pressure to resolve its human rights issues in the buildup to the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, which are set to be held in Beijing.

Last week, the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada imposed a coordinated joint set of sanctions against a number of Chinese officials involved in the human rights abuses of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang province.

The sanctions were the first time in 32 years that the EU or the UK have imposed punishments on China over human rights concerns. The last sanctions from the European countries took their form in the 1989 EU arms embargo that followed the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

The officials impacted by the sanctions include Wang Junzheng, head of Xinjiang production and construction corps, and Chen Mingguo, the director of the public security bureau in Xinjiang.

UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab called the human rights violations in Xinjiang “the largest mass detention of an ethnic and religious group since the second world war.” Raab added that the indication of repression in the province “is clear as it is sobering.”