EU arms embargo against China must remain in force!

Spain wants to remove EU sanctions against China

EU arms embargo against China must remain in force!

The Society for Threatened Peoples STP (Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker GfbV) has appealed to the Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle to speak out for the maintenance of the EU arms embargo against China. "Lifting the arms embargo is not justified until the human rights situation in China has noticeably improved”, said the STP Asia consultant Ulrich Delius. In the light of the most recent sentences against dissidents, Uighurs and Tibetans an end of the sanctions would be a wrong signal. For China’s rulers would take this as an encouragement to continue to disregard Chinese law and the international human rights conventions. The present Spanish EU president announced on Tuesday that he would recommend that the EU end the sanctions.

The human rights organization STP drew the attention of Foreign Minister Westerwelle to the fact that he had been as an opposition politician a decided opponent of a lifting of the embargo.”Civil trade with China – together with change in China – is right. But there is a difference between encouraging civil trade and lifting an arms embargo”, said Westerwelle in a speech in the German Parliament on 15th December 2004. "It is quite simply immoral if the German government tries to buy a permanent seat at the Security Council by lifting the arms embargo against China and through disregard for human rights. That is just horse-trading. It goes way beyond morals and ethics”, said the FDP politician at the time.

The arms embargo was imposed in the year 1989 after the massacre on the Square of Heavenly Peace, at which hundreds of supporters of the democracy movement were killed. "Lifting the sanctions would mean acceptance of the stubborn refusal of the Chinese government to call to account those responsible and to rehabilitate the victims of the attacks”, said Delius. Even the relatives of the innocent dead have until today been intimidated. Their only crime is that of wanting to commemorate them in public.

Ulrich Delius can be reached at asien@gfbv.de