China is sending diplomatic delegations to Europe in an increasingly desperate bid to mend fraying ties. But one trip just got canceled, and another could be.
Erkin Tuniyaz, the governor of the Xinjiang region, backed away from plans to meet officials in London, Brussels, and Paris. Perhaps he worried he would be arrested or have meetings downgraded to be with low-level officials.
He would have had good reason to worry.
Tuniyaz helps oversee Beijing’s genocidal policies against the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims. He claims to conduct “preventive counterterrorism and deradicalization measures,” but he is, arguably, increasing them.
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policies against the Uyghurs include the destruction of religious sites and heavy surveillance, such as ubiquitous facial recognition cameras, police checkpoints, and overnight home visits by CCP minders.
The regime’s concentration camps and prisons detain approximately 1 million Uyghurs, who are subjected to forced labor, brainwashing, “reeducation” in CCP doctrine and the Mandarin Chinese language, torture, rape, forced sterilization, overcrowding, hunger, lack of access to medical care, and the separation of families.
The United States sanctioned Tuniyaz and banned his travel in the country, while London and Brussels only sanctioned some of his deputies.
Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, called the planned visit “shocking and incomprehensible” in comments published by The Wall Street Journal. “Proven complicity in crimes against humanity and genocide must be a clear red line, and must lead to justice and accountability instead of engagement,” he said.
Tuniyaz’s trip coincided with the European Parliament’s debate over the proposed Forced Labor Regulation that would restrict imports from Xinjiang. Did he hope to lobby parliamentarians to reject the bill or score photo-ops with diplomats?
Instead, two politicians joined Uyghur protesters outside Britain’s Foreign Office. They denounced not only Tuniyaz, but the British government’s plan to meet him, saying his visa should be denied.
A member of the Uyghur community holds a placard as he joins a demonstration to call on the British Parliament to vote to recognize the alleged persecution of China's minority Uyghur people as genocide and crimes against humanity, in London on April 22, 2021. (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)
Jewish groups also joined the protest. One member told the Jewish Chronicle: “We have our own history of persecution and discrimination, which morphed into the genocide of the Holocaust, and it has major similarities to what is happening to the Uyghurs. Jews knew in the 1930s and ’40s what it was like to have too few to speak up and act for us.”
Iain Duncan Smith, a Conservative member of Parliament, told the BBC the visit sought a “propaganda coup” for Beijing. (It actually achieved the opposite.)
“We have got to start being much tougher on China—to say, ‘If you want to be part of the free market, if you want to be treated by the rest of the world as a partner, then you have to start abiding by the standards, laws, and responsibilities that come with that, including full human rights,’” Smith said.
Tuniyaz allegedly arrived in London on Feb. 12, and a protest was held outside the Foreign Office the next day.
Smith told cameras at the protest that the attorney general should allow a private prosecution brought by a Uyghur group to move forward. He said that the government’s loudest statement against those guilty of genocide would be, “You are not welcome here, and if you set foot here, we will detain you.”
Another Conservative parliamentarian, Alicia Kearns, agreed. “We should arrest [Tuniyaz] on arrival. The only meetings with him should be in a courtroom,” she said.
Labor peer Helena Kennedy said at the protest: “Why have we allowed him to come here? ... To talk about trade in his province where there is forced labor?”
The Uyghur group, based in North America and led by Salih Hudayar and Ghulam Yaghma, seeks to establish an East Turkistan government-in-exile. On the same day as the protest, the group’s legal team formally requested that London’s counterterrorism police investigate and arrest Tuniyaz on charges of torture. They made a compelling case that he was among those personally responsible and that he should be arrested based on Britain’s Criminal Justice Act of 1988 (Section 134).
It wouldn’t be the first time that UK police started an investigation against the Chinese regime. In December, six employees apparently left the country in a hurry, shortly before a deadline for police questioning about what appeared to be an attack on a protester led by China’s consul general in Manchester.
In the context of arrest threats, Tuniyaz’s meetings in London and Brussels were canceled by the eve of Feb. 14.
That victory for the Uyghurs raises a question. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is still planning a European tour of Germany, France, Italy, and Hungary; perhaps his complicity in the Uyghur genocide is also cause for expulsion or arrest?
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Anders Corr has a bachelor's/master's in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea" (2018).
