European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen discussed human rights issues with China’s Xi Jinping during a high-level meeting in Beijing on Thursday, a rare move for European leaders who typically avoid the topic when visiting the capital. Chinese to talk
Von der Leyen, who visited China from April 5 to 7 along with French President Emmanuel Macron and a delegation of about 50 business leaders, told a press conference after his meeting with the Chinese president that the rights situation of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang was “particularly worrisome.”
“I expressed our deep concern about the deterioration of human rights in China,” he said. “The situation in Xinjiang is particularly worrying. It is important that we continue to discuss these issues and therefore I am pleased that we have already resumed the human rights dialogue between the EU and China.”
The most recent dialogue took place in February in Brussels, where the parties exchanged views on developments in human rights both in the EU and in China. During that session, the EU representatives highlighted the vulnerable situation of the Uyghurs and stressed the urgency of implementing the recommendations of a report issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the human rights situation in Xinjiang.
That report, published last August, said China’s arbitrary detentions of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in its western province of Xinjiang “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
below expectations
Von der Leyen’s meeting with Xi comes at a time when Uyghur rights groups have called for concrete steps to stop China’s crackdown on the majority Muslim group in recent years through intrusive digital surveillance, arbitrary detentions in “re-education” camps, imprisonment, torture and forced labor.
But von der Leyen’s comments at the news conference, which included trade relations and Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, fell short of the expectations of human rights groups, despite the fact that most European leaders they avoid criticizing China’s dismal human rights record when meeting with Chinese. leaders in Beijing.
“From a Western point of view, congratulating some minor positive steps on the environment is standard diplomatic acquiescence, but these things will ultimately lose meaning while simultaneously communicating to Chinese leaders that they can carry out genocide with impunity.” said Nury Turkel, president. of the bipartisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, DC think tank.
Turkel went on to say that stopping active genocide, which is a clear violation of international law, should be the first and foremost concern of any diplomatic engagement.
In June 2022, members of the European Parliament passed a resolution calling the Chinese government’s systemic human rights abuses against the Uyghurs “crimes against humanity and a grave risk of genocide.”
The US State Department and the parliaments of several Western countries have also declared that the Chinese government’s suppression of the Uyghurs amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity.
‘Systemic threat to world peace’
Regarding von der Leyen’s statement about having “deep concerns” about the human rights situation in China, Turkel asked: “How the hell can a European leader make such a statement with a straight face?”
“Do you honestly believe that the Chinese regime carrying out genocide is motivated by the deep concerns of international leaders?” she asked. “Such naivety led us to a Russian invasion and is fueling the destruction of the Uyghur people while creating a less stable world in which China can carry out heinous crimes and further violations of international law with impunity.”
“As feared, the visits by President Macron and President von der Leyen have contributed to whitewashing this genocide and have certainly done more harm than good,” he added.
Laura Harth, campaign manager for Spanish humanitarian group Safeguard Defenders, said von der Leyen’s message in recent weeks signals a fundamental and much-needed policy shift away from the EU’s blind engagement with China.
But such statements about gross human rights violations by the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, regime must be backed by the imposition of concrete consequences, he told Radio Free Asia.
“At this point, we are still not where we should be in that regard, but some European decision makers seem to have finally understood that the CCP’s crimes against the peoples of China and its aggressive stance abroad pose the same systemic threat. to world peace and stability,” Harth said.
Statements on the high-level discussion issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry did not mention human rights issues.
Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matt Reed.
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