Resolution on China, notably the situation of religious and ethnic minorities

The European Parliament adopted by 505 votes to 18 with 47 abstentions, a resolution on China, notably the situation of religious and ethnic minorities

The resolution was tabled by the EPP, S&D, ECR, ALDE, and Greens/EFA groups.

Parliament expressed its deep concern about the increasingly repressive regime that many religious and ethnic minorities, in particular Uyghurs and Kazakhs, Tibetans and Christians face, and called on the Chinese Government to immediately end the practice of arbitrary detentions of members of the Uyghur and Kazakh minority and Tibetans, to close all camps and detention centres and to release the detained persons immediately and unconditionally. Members noted, in this connection, that the new regulations on religious affairs that took effect on 1 February 2018 are more restrictive towards religious groups and activities, and force them to fall more closely into line with party policies. Members deplored the fact that at the EU-China Summit, urgent human rights concerns once again played a marginal role, while in the joint statement issued after the 21st EU-China Summit of 9 April 2019, the EU and China reaffirmed that all human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated. Parliament considered that if and when EU-China summit language is weak on human rights, the Council, the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the Commission should decline to include it at all and issue a separate communication on the topic with a meaningful assessment both of the situation and why stronger language could not be agreed.

Parliament underlined the fact that the situation in Xinjiang, where 10 million Muslim Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs live, has rapidly deteriorated, since the establishment of an extrajudicial detention programme holding from tens of thousands to upwards of a million Uyghurs who are being forced to undergo political ‘re-education’, without being charged or tried, for undetermined periods of time, and are therefore being arbitrarily detained under the pretext of countering terrorism and religious extremism. Members were also concerned that there is information that the Xinjiang camp system has expanded into other parts of China. Parliament urged the Chinese Government to release the full details of persons disappeared in Xinjiang to their families. The EU and Member States must take the lead during the next session of the UN Human Rights Council on a resolution establishing a fact-finding mission to Xinjiang. Parliament urged the VP/HR, the EEAS and Member States to monitor the worrying human rights developments in Xinjiang more intensively, including increased government repression and surveillance, and to speak out against violations of human rights in China both privately and publicly. The Council was asked to consider adopting targeted sanctions against officials responsible for the crackdown in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

With regard to Tibet, Members called on the Chinese authorities to uphold the linguistic, cultural, religious and other fundamental freedoms of Tibetans, and to refrain from settlement policies in favour of the Han people and to the disadvantage of the Tibetans, as well as from forcing Tibetan nomads to abandon their traditional lifestyle. They deplored the fact that the environment for practising Buddhism in Tibet has worsened significantly after the Tibetan protests of March 2008, with the Chinese Government adopting a more pervasive approach to ‘patriotic education’. Parliament was concerned that China’s criminal law is being abused to persecute Tibetans and Buddhists, whose religious activities are equated with ‘separatism’. It condemned the campaigns carried out via the ‘patriotic education’ approach, including measures to stage-manage Tibetan Buddhist monasteries.

The Chinese authorities were called upon to:

-give EU diplomats, journalists and citizens unfettered access to Tibet in reciprocity for the free and open access to the entire territories of the EU Member States that Chinese travellers enjoy;

-allow free, meaningful and unhindered access to Xinjiang province and Tibet Autonomous Region for journalists and international observers, including for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN Special Procedures.

EU institutions were urged to take the issue of access to Tibet into serious consideration in the discussions on the EU-China visa facilitation agreement.

Parliament called for the immediate release of arbitrarily detained people, prisoners of conscience, including practitioners of Falun Gong and for a stop to be put to enforced disappearances. It also called on the Chinese authorities to end their campaigns against Christian congregations and organisations and to stop the harassment and detention of Christian pastors and priests and the forced demolitions of churches.

The resolution recalled the importance of the EU and its Member States raising the issue of human rights violations at every political level with the Chinese authorities, in line with the EU’s commitment to project a strong, clear and unified voice in its approach to the country, including the annual Human Rights Dialogue, Strategic Dialogue, High-Level Economic Dialogue, and Summit, as well as the forthcoming Euro-Asia Summit.

Lastly, Parliament noted that a sophisticated network of invasive digital surveillance has been developed, including facial recognition technology and data collection. It called for the EU, its Member States and the international community to halt all exports and technology transfers of goods and services that are being used by China to extend and improve its cyber surveillance and predictive profiling apparatus; is deeply concerned that China is already exporting such technologies to authoritarian states around the world.