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European and British officials are planning to meet the governor of China’s Xinjiang region this month, prompting furious reactions from lawmakers and Uyghur dissidents.
EU diplomats were this week pondering an invitation from the Chinese Mission to the EU for a meeting with Erkin Tuniyaz to take place on February 21, according to two officials with knowledge of his trip.
Tuniyaz, who has been personally sanctioned by the U.S., is also seeking a meeting with the EU’s diplomatic service, according to one of the officials.
Tuniyaz has been in senior positions in the Xinjiang government for nearly 15 years.
His plan to visit Europe comes less than half a year after the U.N.’s human rights body found that China has committed “serious human rights violations” against the Uyghur Muslim community, adding that such acts are potential crimes against humanity. Back in 2018, the U.N. said that 1 million Uyghurs had been sent to “massive internment camps” for political indoctrination.
Beijing has rejected claims of genocide as “disinformation,” saying that its Xinjiang policy was based on counter-terrorism needs, as well as promoting the local economy.
“While engagement with the People’s Republic of China remains necessary in general, we strongly question the wisdom of officially meeting with someone personally involved in the persecution of Uyghurs,” Reinhard Bütikofer and Miriam Lexmann, European Parliament lawmakers and co-chairs of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said in a statement.
“Governor Tuniyaz bears responsibility for the construction and implementation of the architecture of repression in the region, which amounts to crimes against humanity,” the MEPs added. “It would send a wrong signal to engage with governor Tuniyaz during his Brussels visit officially.”
Uyghur dissidents echoed those comments.
“I was appalled to learn that we’ve been invited to meetings ahead of Erkin Tuniyaz’s visit to Europe,” said Zumretay Erkin, a spokesperson for the World Uyghur Congress, a dissident group. “It is abhorrent that any respectful government invites a perpetrator of genocide to a meeting. It is disrespectful to the Uyghur community worldwide.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry and the EU did not respond to requests for comments.
Tuniyaz is expected to arrive in London next week, followed by a trip to Brussels between February 19 and 21.
British and Belgian activists are threatening to launch legal action against Tuniyaz once he’s on European soil.
“If his visit still happens as planned in the coming days, I will officially request public prosecution for his role in [the] very serious human rights abuses in Xinjiang,” said Samuel Cogolati, a Belgian lawmaker, adding that he would request Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib to “rescind any potential official invitation.” The Belgian Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
The Belgian parliament passed a resolution in 2021 warning of a “serious risk of genocide” in Xinjiang.
The details of Tuniyaz’s trip became known in the form of a leaked email sent from the British Foreign Office to local activists, asking them for their views ahead of the official meeting with the Xinjiang official.
“The Governor of Xinjiang is planning to visit the UK next week, followed by other European countries. We’ve been told that he intends to meet a range of stakeholders in order to discuss the situation in Xinjiang. We’ve agreed to meet him at senior official level, and intend to use the opportunity to press for a change in China’s approach and to make requests on specific issues, including individual cases,” says the email, seen by POLITICO and first reported on by the Guardian.
“We’re really keen to make the most of this opportunity to push for tangible changes on the ground,” the Foreign Office email added.
