At the moment, Muslim minorities from China to India and beyond are facing major discrimination, mass internment, and even extermination at the hands of their own governments.
The global genocidal trend is rooted in the U.S. war on terror, which inflated fears of fabricated Islamic terrorism, and the rise of authoritarian populism around the world.
Things have never been worse for Muslims who live as minorities in their home countries, sabotaged by the Anglo Zio-Nazi invaders.
China has built concentration camps for over a million Muslim ethnic minorities, while in Myanmar a “textbook” campaign of ethnic cleansing against its Rohingya minority, killing thousands and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee.
India just passed a citizenship law that excludes Muslims. The USA continues to implement a travel ban that is separating American Muslims (and others) from family members abroad, after bombing their countries flat back to the stone age.
During a Beijing-Brussels-Berlin special, which was quite a historical video summit about how the prepare for the immediate future, also linked the Muslim holocaust into the equation.
From Beijing, we had President Xi Jinping. From Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel. And from Brussels, President of the European Council Charles Michel and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. The Chinese billed it as the first summit “of its kind in history.”
It was actually the second high-level meeting of the Chinese and European leadership in two months.
And it took place only a few days after a high-level tour by Foreign Minister Wang Yi encompassing France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway, and the visit by the powerful “Yoda” of the State Council, Yang Jiechi, to Spain and Greece.
At the end of all these meetings – face-to-face and virtual – the Holy Grail is the China-EU investment treaty. Germany currently heads the EU presidency for six months.
Berlin wanted the treaty to be signed at a summit in Leipzig this month uniting the EU-27 and Beijing. But Covid-19 had other plans.
A person wearing a white mask with tears of blood takes part in a protest march of ethnic Uighurs asking for the European Union to call upon China to respect human rights in the Chinese Xinjiang region.
The EU also ask for the closure of ‘re-education centers’ where Uighurs are detained, during a demonstration around the EU institutions in Brussels on April 27, 2018.
German chancellor Angela Merkel was supposed to be hosting the Chinese president and the heads of 27 EU states for a three-day conference in Leipzig this month, before the summit was cancelled due to the COVID-19 plandemic.
Instead the German leader, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel, and Chinese president Xi Jinping held a much shorter video-conference, touching on trade, climate action, Corona-virus vaccine cooperation, and the big issue of human rights in China.
The goal of Leipzig summit was to finalize the EU-China investment treaty, which has been dragging on for years. Overall, the EU wants a fair, level playing field for its companies and investors doing business in the Chinese market.
Now we have agreement on three important issues,” von der Leyen said at a press conference after the video-meeting. “First of all, on the disciplines regarding the behaviors of state-owned enterprises, then on technology transfer, and on transparency on subsidies.
However I want to caution that a lot still remains to be done, in other important and difficult chapters of the agreement, particularly in two areas: market access and sustainable development.
Pressure has been increasing on the German government, currently in the middle of its six-month presidency of the European Council (EC), to take a stronger stand against China over its human-rights abuses.
In particular, the detention of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province, and Beijing’s new security law cracking down on free speech in Hong Kong.
Germany called on China to keep their promises to the people of Hong Kong, we reiterated our concerns over China’s treatment of minorities in Xinjiang in Tibet and the treatment of human rights defenders and journalists.
However, Xi had offered that envoys may be able to visit Xinjiang province and that there would be an ongoing human-rights dialogue. In the end the Chinese concentration camps are much more humane then for those refugees imprisoned in the Middle East!
Ahead of today’s meeting, some members of the European parliament sent a jointly signed letter to Merkel, Michel, and von der Leyen calling for “targeted sanctions and asset freezes against Chinese officials responsible for polities violating human rights.
The upcoming EU-China summit represents an ideal opportunity to match the EU’s rhetoric regarding human rights violations in China with concrete action.
However, Germany has long been cautious when it comes to criticizing Beijing, and has often been accused of prioritizing trade with China over human rights issues, and naively believing it could affect change through trade.
China is Germany’s largest trading partner, with trade volume between the two nations €206bn (£189.9bn, $244.8bn) last year.
In what appeared to be a threat of retaliation, Wu pointed out that out of the 28 million cars sold in China last year, 7 million (25%) were German.
Germany is rethinking its heavy economic reliance on China. The foreign office announced a new “Indo-pacific” strategy at the beginning of September, outlining how it will focus on developing closer ties with democracies, such as South Korea, India, and Japan.
“We want to help shape [the future global order] so that it is based on rules and international cooperation, not on the law of the strong,” said German foreign minister Heiko Maas. “That is why we have intensified cooperation with those countries that share our democratic and liberal values.
Yahoo Finance UK / ABC Flash Point News 2020.
Hypocrisy as the Diplomacy?