Chen Quanguo, Communist Party secretary of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, speaks at the meeting of the Xinjiang delegation on the sidelines of the National People's Congress in Beijing, March 12, 2019. (Jason Lee/Reuters)
The measure comes at a time when Western governments are increasingly using sanctions to hold violators to account.
Canada imposed sanctions on eight former and current senior Chinese officials on Tuesday, citing their involvement in grave human rights violations in Tibet and Xinjiang and against Falun Gong followers.
The sanctions attempt to freeze the assets of the individuals by prohibiting Canadians living inside and outside the country from providing financial services to them or engaging in activities related to their property.
“Canada is deeply concerned by the human rights violations in Xinjiang and Tibet and against those who practice Falun Gong,” Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said in a statement. “We call on the Chinese government to put an end to this systematic campaign of repression and uphold its international human rights obligations.”
Joly visited China in July and met with her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, to discuss relations, human rights and global and regional security issues.
The announcement comes at a time when Western governments — particularly Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union — are increasingly turning to sanctioning individuals in China involved in the persecution of Tibetans in Tibet, Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang and practitioners of Falun Gong, a religious group banned in China.
Probably the most prominent of those sanctioned is Chen Quanguo, Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary of Tibet Autonomous Region from 2011 to 2016 and of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region from 2016 to 2021.
Also sanctioned was Wu Yingjie, Communist Party Secretary of Tibet from 2016 to 2021.
Wu, 67, was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and removed from other public positions for disciplinary violations following a corruption probe, Chinese officials announced Tuesday. They said he failed to implement the Central Committee’s strategy for governing Tibet, and intervened in engineering projects allegedly for personal gain, according to an article in the state-run China Daily.
Others who were sanctioned include:
- Erkin Tuniyaz, deputy secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xinjiang Committee and chairman of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
- Shohrat Zakir, chairman of Xinjiang and deputy secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xinjiang Committee from 2014 to 2021
- Peng Jiarui, vice chairman of Xinjiang and vice chairman of the Xinjiang Regional Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, who previously served as commander of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a paramilitary organization
- Huo Liujun, party secretary of Xinjiang’s Public Security Department since March 2017
- Zhang Hongbo, former director of Tibet’s Public Security Bureau
- You Quan, former director of the United Front Work Department and a former secretary of the Secretariat of the Chinese Communist Party
‘Ongoing atrocities’
The Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project based in Canada submitted the names of six of the individuals to the Canadian government for sanctions consideration in December 2022, said Mehmet Tohti, the group’s executive director.
Tibetan and Falun Gong organizations provided the other two names, he said.
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Adrian Zenz, senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, said the measure was long overdue.
“Great to see Canada do this,” he said. “The Europeans are now far behind; they have not even sanctioned Chen Quanguo yet.”
“Sanctioning Tuniyaz is very important in terms of showing to the world that the atrocities in the Uyghur homeland are ongoing,” said Zenz, who is an expert on Xinjiang.
The most prominent individual is Chen Quanguo because he was the person behind China’s suppression of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang that first drew international attention in 2017, said Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat who worked in China.
Wang, who is retired, has said he no foreign assets, family abroad or desire to travel, so the sanctions are symbolic but not substantive, Burton said.
The same likely applies to the others who played a part in the repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, including Erkin Tuniyaz, Peng Jiarui, Huo Liujun and Shohrat Zakir, he said.
“But Canada’s action sends out a clear signal of support for Uyghurs in the PRC and their families in Canada and elsewhere,” Burton added, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “It also makes clear to Chinese Communist Party officials that they will be held accountable for their complicity in violations of international law.”
‘False allegations’
On Wednesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the Canada government “made false allegations against China in the name of human rights and imposed illicit sanctions on Chinese personnel.”
“This is gross interference in China’s internal affairs and a serious violation of international law and the basic norms governing international relations,” she said. “China firmly opposes and strongly condemns this.”
In response, Canadian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Charlotte MacLeod told RFA that the country has a rigorous due diligence process to evaluate possible cases of human rights violations.
"Based on information that Canada considers to be credible and reliable, Canada assessed there are reasonable grounds to believe these eight individuals have participated in gross and systematic human rights violations against ethnic and religious minorities, including in Xinjiang and Tibet and against Falun Gong practitioners.“
The United States previously imposed sanctions on all eight officials for their connections to serious human rights violations.
The Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project welcomed the move.
“This decision by Canada is a significant step toward accountability for the architects of mass repression in East Turkistan,” Omer Kanat, the group’s executive director, said in a statement, using Uyghurs' preferred name for Xinjiang.
“Targeted sanctions send a clear message that perpetrators of atrocity crimes cannot act with impunity.”
Translated by Mamatjan Juma for RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
The story was updated to add comments by a Canadian Foreign Ministry spokesperson.
