The US on Friday imposed sanctions on two senior Chinese officials over “serious human rights abuse” in Tibet, including alleged torture and killings of prisoners and forced sterilization.
Washington blocked any US assets and criminalized transactions with Wu Yingjie (吳英杰), who was the Chinese Communist Party secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region from 2016 to last year, and Zhang Hongbo (張洪波), China’s police chief in the Himalayan region since 2018, who is believed to still be in charge.
The sanctions announcement comes despite a relative easing of tensions between Washington and Beijing since US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met last month in Bali and agreed to step up dialogue.
Photo: Reuters
“Our actions further aim to disrupt and deter the People’s Republic of China’s arbitrary detention and physical abuse of members of religious minority groups in the Tibetan Autonomous Region,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
Wu directed a policy of “stability” in Tibet that included “serious human rights abuse, including extrajudicial killings, physical abuse, arbitrary arrests and mass detentions,” the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement.
“Additional abuses during Wu’s tenure include forced sterilization, coerced abortion, restrictions on religious and political freedoms and the torture of prisoners,” it said.
Zhang has engaged in abuses, including the torture and killing of prisoners, by running detention centers across Tibet, the department said.
China has ruled the predominantly Buddhist region since 1951. The region’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled in 1959 to India amid an abortive uprising.
As part of a slew of sanctions on Friday, the US also targeted North Korea’s border guards over their shoot-on-sight orders against citizens fleeing into China and Russia.
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