Human rights
Article reserved for subscribers
Beijing has responded to a round of US sanctions against Chinese companies, products and executives by blacklisting four Americans.
“We urge the United States to revoke the so-called ‘sanctions’ and to stop interfering in matters relating to Xinjiang and China’s internal affairs.” On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian announced that four American citizens, members of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a federal body created in 1998 that regularly denounces the repression in courses against Muslims in Xinjiang, have been blacklisted in retaliation for US sanctions. Nadine Maenza, Nury Turkel, Anurima Bhargava, James W. Carr and their family members are now banned from traveling to China (including Hong Kong and Macao), their possible assets in China are frozen, and it is “Prohibits Chinese citizens and organizations from dealing with these people”. A reaction to the addition, a few days ago, of around thirty Chinese companies to the long list of entities placed on the American blacklist under the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, passed for the first time in January 2019. Among the newcomers, the industrial champion of the DJI drone, which has in its capital large American investors who could be forced to withdraw. And several Chinese biotechnology companies accused of …