The EU welcomes the reopening of the dialogue with China on human rights

17 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The European Union has welcomed this Friday the reopening of the dialogue in Brussels on Human Rights between China and the EU after a visit by the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, to the Asian giant in December 2022.

“The EU expressed its serious concern about the persistent restrictions on the exercise of fundamental freedoms, the use of forced labor, the limits to procedural guarantees and the lack of judicial independence in China,” it said in a statement.

In this sense, the community club has highlighted the “vulnerable” situation of the Uyghur and Tibetan communities, as well as religious, ethnic and linguistic minorities throughout the country, with special emphasis on the latest report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Human Rights in Xinjiang.

“The EU also referred to the deterioration of the situation of freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and freedom of expression in Hong Kong,” he specified, thus urging “investigate and stop violations of Human Rights” in the aforementioned regions.

Likewise, it has expressed its concern about “the cases of illegal detention, forced disappearance, torture and mistreatment.” “The EU raised several individual cases and urged China to immediately release those detained without respecting due process requirements,” he said.

Specifically, some of the cases dealt with during the dialogue have been the Sakharov Prize winners, Ilham Tohti and Tashpolat Tiyip, respectively, or the case of Gui Minhai, the Swedish bookseller arrested in China in 2015.

The dialogue was attended by the deputy managing director for Asia and the Pacific of the EU, Paola Pampaloni, as well as the deputy director general for International Organizations and Conferences of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Sun Lei.