Heavy artillery began raining from the sky onto villages to the north of Kale township on March 30, touching off what would become a week of fierce fighting between junta troops and local armed opposition forces.
By the time the dust had settled on Wednesday, more than 50,000 residents of 17 villages had scattered, leaving a vast swathe of area on the outskirts of the bustling township in Myanmar’s Sagaing region eerily quiet and creating a humanitarian crisis in nearby population centers where many fled to seek shelter.
“They all had to flee to the town of Kalay – the number of refugees coming into town amounted up to about 30,000 in two days, according to our calculations,” an aid worker assisting the displaced told Radio Free Asia. The influx of refugees amounts to nearly a quarter of the town’s population of around 130,000.
“What they mainly need is mosquito nets, as there are a lot of mosquitoes in the summer. The weather is too hot, too. They need medicines and food such as rice, cooking oil and salt.”
Following the artillery barrage, junta troops from the junta’s Kale-based Kha-La-Ya (228) unit, backed by forces from the regional command headquarters, conducted village raids using ground troops while aircraft provided support.
A fighter jet and three military helicopters were deployed to attack a location near the village of Pyin Taw U on Monday evening alone, residents said.
An official with the anti-junta Kale People’s Defense Force paramilitary group told RFA that multiple buildings were destroyed during the week of raids.
“How the fighting broke out was that the junta forces first started firing heavy artillery on the villages in the north of Kale more than 40 times and then their ground troops [and air force] began to attack,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity citing security concerns.
“We haven’t been able to confirm the details of the casualties and property damage in the villages yet. A Christian church and several houses have been damaged,” he said. “The junta threw fire bombs into the villages [on Thursday]. Nyung Kone and Kyi Kone villages are still burning.”
The official said that two people from the Kale PDF had been captured by the junta, one was killed and three were injured in the fighting.
A spokesman for the Kale PDF claimed that 10 junta soldiers were killed and 20 were wounded over the course of the week, but RFA has not been able to independently confirm the numbers.
A Baptist church in Kale’s Pyidaw village, Sagaing region, was destroyed by air raids by Myanmar junta forces, Monday, April 3, 2023. Credit: Chin National League (Upper Chindwin)
Early on Tuesday, fighting broke out between junta soldiers stationed at Kale University and the anti-junta Siyin region Civic Defense Militia, the militia said in a statement. One junta soldier was killed and CDM forces captured some military weapons, the group said.
Attempts by RFA to reach Aye Hlaing, the junta spokesman for Sagaing region, about the clashes went unanswered Friday.
‘Our village is burning’
A resident of one of the villages north of Kale, who also declined to be named, told RFA that most of the people displaced by the fighting are sheltering in the homes of relatives in town, churches and Bible schools, or in the jungle.
Other sources said that at least two civilians were killed by the military during the raids, while three others were injured by shelling and airstrikes.
Meanwhile, the junta troops have set up camp at a Buddhist monastery in Nyang Kone village, making it impossible to return to the area, a resident said.
“When the fighting paused, we returned home riding motorcycles to fetch our items of value, but once we heard them start back up, we had to flee again,” the Nyang Kone resident said.
“We can hear gunshots and artillery shelling from the town. I dare not go back to my village. Other villagers who fled to the nearby woods said that our village is burning.”
On Thursday, the anti-junta Kale Defense Force issued a warning to residents traveling to the north of the township that “a fight could break out at any time.”
Residents estimate that since Myanmar’s military seized power in a Feb. 1, 2021 coup d’etat, around 70,000 people – or 1 out of every 5 inhabitants – have fled fighting in Kale township.
Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
About 100 activists with the main opposition Candlelight Party started a protest on Friday in Phnom Penh – their first demonstration in several years – but police quickly confronted and dispersed them, claiming they were causing a traffic jam.
The activists gathered in front of the party’s headquarters to demand the release of recently arrested party officials.
The city had refused to give them permission to protest at Freedom Park, the location of previous rallies against Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government, the party’s Youth Movement President Thorn Chantha said.
Party organizers have faced threats and harassment as they prepare for July’s parliamentary elections. Party Vice President Thach Setha, for example, was arrested in January on charges of writing false checks. Her lawyers filed another request for bail earlier this week.
“We also would like the political space to be opened ahead of the election to show the international and national community is acceptable,” said Thorn Chantha. “There should be fair competition. While other parties have the right to do everything, the Candlelight Party is being restricted.”
Separately, Thorn Chantha said he was assaulted on Thursday by two unknown people after he ordered coffee. He said he was struck with a baton on his shoulder. The assailants then followed him as he was fleeing in his car and smashed his driver’s window with a rock, he said.
“This violence is to intimidate opposition party activists who dare to conduct political activities ahead of the election,” Thorn Chantha said.
‘People understand their rights’
Police from the city’s Sen Sok district pushed the protesters away from the party’s headquarters, and activists eventually agreed to move off the street and into the party’s headquarters, said Rong Chhun, a labor leader who recently became the party’s vice president.
“We were protesting on the pavement, but the traffic was flowing. The accusation is unjustified,” he said. “This shows that they restrict freedom of speech and assembly.”
There was no violence between police and protesters, he said. District officials invited him to a meeting on Monday to discuss the demonstration, which he told Radio Free Asia he would attend. But he urged NGOs and diplomats to monitor what takes place.
“This was yet another image of repression to scare the youths and to scare people into not expressing themselves,” he said. “But people understand their rights and the law now. The more they scare us, the more people will join us.”
Translated by Samean Yun. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.
Death and destruction is everywhere in Myanmar, and it’s getting worse by the day. But at least one country doesn’t seem to mind.
China has never wavered in its support for the junta since its Feb. 1, 2021, coup d’etat, and while other countries have condemned the military regime, pulled their investments, and refrained from trading with the nation engulfed in a bloody civil war, Beijing appears to be stepping up its engagement with the generals in Naypyidaw.
“After the military coup, it was easier for the junta to start new investments and resume projects that were paused during previous military regimes … because there are no more public protests against the projects like before,” Yein Lian Han, the head of the Shan Human Rights Front, told Radio Free Asia’s Burmese service.
“Most Chinese companies do not act accountable,” he said. “Since they cooperate with the military junta and prioritize their own benefits, neglecting the interests of the locals, there are a lot of negative effects for the people.”
Those who control the levers of power in China aren’t blind to the crisis afflicting their neighbor to the south; they’re simply adhering to Beijing’s diplomatic modus operandi – a strategy of non-interference in the sovereignty of the nations with whom it trades.
According to the junta’s Investment and Companies Directorate, between the coup and February 2023, China invested more than U.S.$113 million in Myanmar. China is the second-largest foreign investor in Myanmar after Singapore.
Beijing’s willingness to play ball with a regime that has killed an estimated 3,225 civilians since seizing power comes as no surprise, said a Myanmar-based researcher who focuses on Chinese projects in the country. China has dealt only with the military leadership during the more than five decades of junta rule in Myanmar since 1962.
In this June 1, 2012 photo, a worker walks by the oil tanks that are under construction at a site operated by China National Petroleum Corporation at an offshore block of Madae Island near Kyauk Phyu, Rakhine state, Myanmar. Credit: Lwin Ko Taik/AFP
But the researcher, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing security concerns, said that the Burmese people see Beijing’s engagement as solely focused on its own bottom line – and warned that they are keeping score.
“It’s important for us to know the details of those agreements for transparency, but it hasn’t happened under the previous juntas and it’s far less likely under this one,” he said.
“So what happens is that there is an increasing amount of public dissatisfaction with Chinese investment. The more they invest, the more people resent them. Therefore, the Chinese government should reconsider investing in Myanmar amid such a situation.”
Multitude of new projects
In the first quarter of 2023 alone, Beijing and Naypyidaw have greenlit multiple China-led projects in Myanmar – including three wind power projects in Rakhine state and a hydroelectric power station in Kachin state – and hammered out a trade deal through which China’s Yunnan province will provide the junta with rice and fertilizer, according to state media.
And last week, the Institute for Strategy and Policy (Myanmar), which closely monitors China-Myanmar relations, confirmed that several businesses from both countries had agreed to implement an export production garden zone project in Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady region.
The researcher noted that China’s power projects in Myanmar are being implemented in the same areas where it has other development interests, suggesting that “they are only intended for Chinese-owned businesses,” not the benefit of the people.
According to the institute, China is focusing on salvaging its trade agreements and implementing economic corridor projects since reopening its borders after ending its zero-COVID policy in early January.
The group said Beijing is likely working to speed up its cooperation with the junta through local authorities in Yunnan province, which borders Myanmar’s Shan and Kachin states, while scrupulously avoiding any display of contact between top leaders.
In this June 1, 2012 photo, oil tanks are under construction at a site operated by China National Petroleum Corporation at an offshore block of Madae Island near Kyauk Phyu, Rakhine State, Myanmar. Credit: Lwin Ko Taik/AFP
Meanwhile, there have been ongoing discussions between China and the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, a private business association related to the military junta. A top official with the UMFCCI, who declined to be named, recently told RFA that China has a positive view of Myanmar’s economic development and is preparing investments in the latter’s agriculture, seafood and meat production industries, as well as its energy sector.
Impact on the people
Members of the public in Myanmar who RFA interviewed for this story expressed wariness over China’s growing investment in the country, saying its projects have mostly made their lives more difficult.
“There is no local development and residents often lose their businesses [due to the impact of the projects],” said a resident of Rakhine state, who claimed that his work as a fisherman had dried up after a Chinese project was built in the region.
“We aren’t allowed to fish as freely as before. A family could make ends meet if they fished for a month in the past. But now, they can’t get enough to sustain even if they drop their nets for a whole year.”
Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government has taken a stronger stance. While it has not specifically mentioned China, in 2021 the NUG declared any post-coup foreign investment in the country “illegal” because it was negotiated with and benefits an illegitimate government.
Anti-junta People’s Defense Force paramilitary groups have targeted foreign-backed infrastructure through which the junta profits, saying such funds are used by the military to attack the people of Myanmar.
In this January 21, 2023 photo, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, center and China’s ambassador to Myanmar Chen Hai, right, take part in a ceremony on the eve of the Lunar New Year, in Yangon. Credit: AFP Photo
Attempts by RFA to contact China’s Embassy in Yangon about the country’s increased investment in Myanmar went unanswered Friday, as did attempts to reach Aung Naing Oo, the junta’s minister of economy and commerce.
But Bo Bo Oo, China relations officer for the deposed National League for Democracy party, told RFA that any nation that does business with a junta that is killing its own people can expect a public backlash.
“The whole world knows that the junta, which seized power illegally, has been brutally oppressing the people of Myanmar,” he said. “Investments that the junta benefits from will definitely be opposed by the people of Myanmar, whether they are from China or any other country.”
Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
A dozen wild elephants destroyed several homes in a village in northern Laos that borders protected forest land, causing extensive damage to rice fields and other crops, several villagers said.
The rampage on Monday in Oudomxay province followed a similar incident in January when the elephants showed up just as the rice plants were growing tall, according to one resident of the province’s La district. They came again five days later to eat other crops in the area.
The elephants also wrecked a shelter at a nearby rubber plantation, the resident said, adding that villagers are now afraid to work their farms in the evening because the animals like to come after sunset.
A husband and wife said in a video clip on their Facebook page that their hut and rice fields were ruined in the Monday attack.
“They destroyed all of our property, including our clothes, kitchen wares, pots and dishes,” the couple said in a video clip on their Facebook page. “This time is the worst, they destroyed everything.”
Radio Free Asia attempted to contact the couple through Facebook, but didn’t immediately receive a response.
The annual aggressive period
Elephants who eat farmers’ crops are simply looking for food, said a staff member at the Elephant Conservation Center in neighboring Xayaburi province. But if they destroy other property, like homes or trees, that’s an indication that male elephants are in their annual aggressive period, known as musth, the staff member said.
A large stretch of forest land has been set aside for elephants where they can live and forage peacefully, an official with Oudomxay province’s Agriculture and Forestry Department said. There are about 20 wild elephants in La district, he said.
“We’ve ordered people to move away from the habitat,” the official said. “We’ve also built some tree houses to monitor and watch the wild animal activities.”
District authorities paid some compensation to villagers who lost their homes in January that included the provision of lumber, corrugated sheets and nails. Eventually, provincial authorities want to develop the area as a tourist attraction where people can drive their cars to watch the elephants, the official said.
Laos has about 800 elephants, and half of those live in the wild, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.
Translated by Max Avary. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met with the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy on May 5, setting a precedent for “transit diplomacy” by a Taiwanese head of state.
Three Chinese entities – its Foreign Ministry, its National People’s Congress Foreign Affairs Committee and its embassy in Washington – soon issued statements that blasted the United States for violating the “one-China” principle and provisions outlined in three joint communiqués.
Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) found that Beijing’s claims were untrue, and a misleading attempt to amplify Beijing’s own political narrative.
In Depth
McCarthy led a bipartisan group of 17 lawmakers to meet with Tsai at the Reagan Library in California on May 5.
After the meeting, the two leaders issued a statement in which McCarthy emphasized that “the friendship between the people of Taiwan and America is a matter of profound importance to the free world and it is critical to maintain economic freedom, peace and regional stability.”
US Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy [6th R] speaks with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen [5th L] during a meeting at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, on Wednesday, April 5, 2023. Credit: AFP
Tsai said that in the face of unprecedented challenges to peace and democracy, “the urgency of keeping the beacon of freedom shining cannot be understated.”
The public meeting with the speaker of the house on U.S. soil set a precedent for “transit diplomacy” conducted by a Taiwanese head of state.
McCarthy, who is third in line to the presidency, is viewed as an important political figure by Beijing. Tsai’s meeting with him crossed “the first uncrossable red line” in Sino-U.S. relations. Soon after the meeting, the Chinese Foreign Ministry accused the United States of being in “serious violation of the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-US joint communiqués.”
Is there any provision in the China-US joint communiqués that prohibit Taiwan’s president from transiting through the U.S.?
No, there is not. No statement, provision or text in any of the three U.S.-China Communiqués, the Taiwan Relations Act or the Six Assurances prohibits such transit.
Is Tsai the first Taiwanese president to transit through the U.S.?
No. All four of Taiwan’s presidents chosen through free and direct elections — Lee Teng-hui, Chen Shui-bian, Ma Ying-jeou and Tsai – have transited through the United States.
Daniel Kritenbrink, former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs for the Department of State, pointed out at a briefing on March 30th that Tsai herself has done so six times since taking office in 2016. “Such transits are undertaken out of the safety, comfort, convenience and dignity of the traveler,” he said.
In this March 27, 2019, photo, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen [R] is greeted by supporters upon arriving in Hawaii. Credit: Taiwan Presidential Office via AP
Has China protested each Taiwanese presidents’ transit through the U.S equally?
No, China has objected more strongly to some Taiwanese president’s transits than others, depending on their political party.
The late Kuomintang (KMT) President Lee Teng-hui established diplomatic precedent for such transits when he was allowed to pass through Hawaii in 1994 under the conditions that he was not to be granted a visa and would not stay overnight. Lee later refused to leave the plane he was on while it was refueling as a sign of protest against the unceremonious reception.
This aroused the sympathy of Congress, which intervened and later paved the way for Lee to officially make a “private visit” to his alma mater Cornell University the following year. China’s subsequent diplomatic uproar and live missile tests conducted in the Taiwan Straits pushed the United States to establish internal regulations for similar future incidents, with all subsequent Taiwanese presidents trips being labeled as “transits” and not “visits.”
Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui receives the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences during a breakfast banquet at the university at Ithaca, N.Y., in 1995. Credit: Associated Press
China ardently opposed the Democratic Progressive Party President Chen Shui-bian’s visit to New York City in 2003 to receive the International League for Human Rights’ annual Human Rights Award, mobilizing pro-Beijing factions of overseas Chinese in the U.S. to protest.
But its reaction was more restrained when KMT President Ma Ying-jeou delivered a closed-door speech at his alma mater Harvard University in 2015. A year later, China offered little protest even after Ma was confirmed to have spoken over the phone with then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan while transiting through Los Angeles and was rumored to have spoken with then-Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Tsai’s latest trip is the first time a Taiwanese president has publicly met with the speaker of the House on U.S. soil and the second time in the past year that Tsai has met with a speaker of the House, following Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in 2022.
McCarthy’s office confirmed and announced the meeting on its own initiative, and both Republican and Democrat legislators attended the event.
The meeting between Tsai and Mcarthy will likely lead to another serious confrontation in U.S.-China relations. Minister Xu Xueyuan, chargé d’affaires of the Chinese Embassy in the United States, told international media that,“The so-called transit is merely a disguise to a true intention of seeking breakthrough and advocating Taiwan independence.” In response to U.S. statements that Tsai’s transit is not a visit and follows established precedent, Xu noted “past mistakes cannot be considered precedents. This will not lessen our response.”
After the United States and China established diplomatic relations, Washington promised to maintain “unofficial relations” with Taiwan, noted Susan Thornton, former acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
“This was not formally spelled out, but was exercised following diplomatic normalization in a series of conventions that were seriously enforced at the beginning and have been eroding ever since,” said Thornton. China worries that more lax enforcement by the U.S. will erode its one China principle, while the U.S. believes such looser regulations do not break its commitment to only maintain “unofficial relations” with Taiwan.
Is Tsai’s meeting with Mcarthy an official visit?
It depends.
Thornton told AFCL that questions concerning the Tsai’s transit and subsequent meeting with McCarthy “are basically grey areas where the U.S. and China have different versions of the truth.”
The American government views the legislative branch and Congress as independent of the executive, and hence not “official,” Thornton said. “China views this as the number three person in the U.S. government per order of precedence (diplomatic protocol).”
When asked about McCarthy’s meeting with Tsai, Kritenbrink stated, “Congress is an independent, co-equal branch of government” and noted that Tsai is not the first Taiwanese president to interact with members of the U.S. Congress while in transit. In an effort to reassure China, Kritenbrink repeatedly emphasized that the U.S. one-China policy has not changed, and that the U.S. still “does not support Taiwan independence.”
Are Washington’s “one-China” policy and Beijing’s “one-China” principle in accord?
No, they are not. The United States and China have always been divided on the issue of Taiwan.
Beijing’s one-China principle is solely based on its interpretation of the three joint U.S.-China communiqués.
The U.S. one-China policy is also built on the subsequent Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances to Taiwan, which Beijing does not recognize as legitimate.
While the United States accepts there is only one China and that the People’s Republic of China is its sole legitimate government, Washington also acknowledges — rather than accepts — China’s claims of sovereignty over Taiwan, notes Evan Medeiros, former senior director for Asia on the National Security Council under President Obama. According to McEwen, the U.S. believes that Taiwan’s sovereignty is undetermined and remains intentionally ambiguous on the issue.
In response to the meeting between Tsai and McCarthy, China’s National People’s Congress Foreign Affairs Committee noted that several documents of international law, including the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation, clarify China’s sovereignty over Taiwan.
Did the three joint Communiqués touch on the topic of Taiwan’s president transiting through the U.S.?
No they did not.
The 1972 Shanghai Communiqué
China reaffirmed its longstanding position that “the Taiwan question is the crucial question obstructing the normalization of relations between China and the United States; the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government of China; Taiwan is a province of China which has long been returned to the motherland; the liberation of Taiwan is China’s internal affair in which no other country has the right to interfere; and all US forces and military installations must be withdrawn from Taiwan. The Chinese Government firmly opposes any activities which aim at the creation of ‘one China, one Taiwan’ ‘one China, two governments’ ‘two Chinas’ an ‘independent Taiwan’ or advocate that ‘the status of Taiwan remains to be determined’.”
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen attends a bipartisan meeting with US Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, a California Repubican, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, on April 5, 2023. Credit: AFP
Washington responded that “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves. With this prospect in mind, it affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all US forces and military installations from Taiwan. In the meantime, it will progressively reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminishes.”
The 1978 Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations
Compared to the lengthy Shanghai Communiqué, the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations contains only eight terse points.
The second point states: “The United States of America recognizes the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China. Within this context, the people of the United States will maintain cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan.”
The seventh states: “The Government of the United States of America acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.”
The 1982 August 17 Communiqué
This is the only communiqué that focuses exclusively on Taiwan, specifically on the issue of American arms sales to Taiwan. In order to understand the U.S. position fully, it is necessary to compare the communiqué with the now declassified Six Assurances to Taiwan and the Reagan Memorandum, the details of which AFCL has written about before.
Conclusion
AFCL found that Chinese accusations that the United States had committed “serious violation of the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-US joint communiqués” to be false. There is no provision in the three U.S.-China Joint Communiqués that prohibits the president of Taiwan from transiting through the U.S. or meeting with the speaker of the House.
Beijing’s latest misinformation surrounding Tsai’s transit follows a long trend of tailoring its responses to examples of Taiwanese “transit diplomacy” based on the political party currently holding office in Taiwan. A review of history shows that Beijing favors mild reactions for transits by KMT officials while reserving more severe critiques for transits conducted by DPP officials.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen discussed human rights issues with China’s Xi Jinping during a high-level meeting on Thursday in Beijing, a rare move for European leaders who usually avoid the topic when they visit the Chinese capital for talks.
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 news conference held after their meeting with the Chinese president that the human rights situation concerning Uyghurs in Xinjiang was “particularly concerning.”
“I expressed our deep concerns about the deterioration of human rights in China,” she said. “The situation in Xinjiang is particularly concerning. It is important that we continue to discuss these issues, and I therefore welcome that we have already resumed the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue.”
The most recent dialogue took place in February in Brussels, where the parties exchanged views on human rights developments both in the EU and in China. During that session, EU representatives highlighted the vulnerable situation of Uyghurs and underscored the urgency of implementing the recommendations of a report issued by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights on the human rights situation in Xinjiang.
That report, issued last August, said China’s arbitrary detentions of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in its western Xinjiang province “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
Short of expectations
Von der Leyen’s meeting with Xi comes at a time when Uyghur rights groups have called for concrete measures to stop China’s repression of the mostly 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 rights groups, even though most European leaders steer clear of criticizing China’s dismal human rights record when they meet with Chinese leaders in Beijing.
“In a Western view, complimenting a few minor positive steps on the environment is a standard diplomatic acquiescence, but these things will ultimately be rendered meaningless while also communicating to the Chinese leadership that they can carry out genocide with impunity,” Nury Turkel, chair of the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and senior fellow at Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
China’s President Xi Jinping (C), his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron (L), and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (R) meet for a working session in Beijing, April 6, 2023. Credit: Pool via Associated Press
Turkel went on to say that stopping an 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 Uyghurs “crimes against humanity and a serious risk of genocide.”
The U.S. State Department and the parliaments of several Western counties also have declared that the Chinese government’s repression of Uyghurs amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity.
‘Systemic threat to global peace’
Regarding von der Leyen’s statement about having “deep concerns” about China’s human rights situation, Turkel asked, “How on earth can any European leader make such a statement with a straight face?”
“Do they honestly believe that the Chinese regime carrying out genocide is moved by deep concerns from international leaders?” he asked. “Such naïveté brought 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 atrocity crimes and further breaches of international law with impunity.”
“As feared, the visits by President Macron and President von der Leyen have contributed to the whitewashing of this genocide and have certainly done more harm than good,” he added.
Laura Harth, campaign director at the Spanish humanitarian group Safeguard Defenders, said von der Leyen’s messaging in recent weeks indicates a fundamental and much-needed policy shift away from the EU’s blind engagement with China.
But such statements on grave human rights violations by the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, regime need to be backed up by the imposition of concrete consequences, she told Radio Free Asia.
“At this point, we are not yet where we ought to be in that respect, but some European decision-makers seem to have finally understood that the CCP’s crimes against the peoples in China and its aggressive posture abroad represent one and the same systemic threat to global peace and stability,” Harth said.
Statements about the high-level discussion issued by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not mention human rights issues.
