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Foreign Minister Baerbock: »Documentation on the most serious violations of human rights in Xinjiang«
Photo: IMAGO/Janine Schmitz/photothek.de / IMAGO/photothek
After the revelations of the Xinjiang Police Files by SPIEGEL and its research partners, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) sees the Chinese government as having an obligation to clarify the allegations of the state's repressive apparatus against the Uyghurs.
In a video conference with her Chinese colleague Wang Yi, Baerbock "also addressed the shocking reports and new documentation of the most serious human rights violations in Xinjiang," according to a statement from her ministry.
Human rights are an elementary part of the international order.
Baerbock's cabinet colleague,
Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP)
, made a similar statement .
"The pictures from China are shocking," he told the "Handelsblatt" about the revelations by SPIEGEL and other media partners.
"We have to address Chinese officials about the human rights situation at every opportunity."
Against this background, the enormous dependence of the German economy on the Chinese market is particularly depressing.
It is therefore "also an imperative of economic prudence to quickly differentiate our economic relationships".
The
CDU foreign expert Norbert Röttgen
made the traffic light coalition responsible.
»The Xinjiang Police Files document a new dimension of brutality against the Uyghurs.
They clearly show what kind of inhuman regime we are dealing with in China," Röttgen told SPIEGEL.
»The traffic light parties have written in the coalition agreement that they will clearly address China's human rights violations, especially in Xinjiang.
I expect that the federal government will now do the same and clearly communicate what consequences Germany is drawing from the new findings.«
Röttgen said that the violence that China has so far directed primarily inwards could eventually be used by the Chinese party leadership to assert its own interests.
"The German federal government should take the Xinjiang Police Files as a warning and start reducing its own dependencies on China." In addition, it must be ensured that German companies are neither involved in forced labor in Xinjiang nor benefit from it.
The publication of the Xinjiang Police Files coincides with the visit of UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet to Xinjiang.
The United Nations estimates that around a million people were at one point incarcerated in northwestern China.
Most are Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in the People's Republic.
For years, China's government has claimed that the camps are professional training institutions aimed at fighting poverty and extremist ideas.
Staying in the camps is voluntary.
This is contradicted by the Xinjiang Police Files.
Green MEP Viola von Cramon
is now increasing the
pressure on Bachelet.
The visit must not degenerate into a Communist Party propaganda show, she said.
“The world public has a right to see and know what's going on in the region.
The authority to interpret the conditions in the detention camps cannot lie in Xi Jinping's hands alone."
The former
Greens member of the Bundestag, Margarete Bause
, called for a fundamental change of course in German China policy.
Further EU sanctions are now needed against those responsible for these crimes.
"The policy of the Merkel era, which gave priority to economic interests and kicking things around when it came to human rights, has failed." That applies to Russia and China.
Gone in the torture chair
On Tuesday morning, DER SPIEGEL, together with thirteen other media houses, unveiled new documents that prove the arbitrary and mass internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, a region in north-west China.
Among them are never-before-seen photos from inside re-education camps, confidential official instructions and speeches by Chinese officials.
The research is published under the title Xinjiang Police Files.
For example, the leak includes a previously unknown speech by the former party leader of the Xinjiang region in 2017, which said that any prisoner who tried to escape even a few steps was to be "shot".
A photo also shows a detainee in a so-called tiger chair - a notorious torture device.
Other images show security forces with assault rifles.
In an official statement, the Chinese embassy in Washington did not go into specific questions, but stated that the measures in Xinjiang are directed against terrorist efforts and that it is not about "human rights or a religion".
The Xinjiang Police Files were leaked to German anthropologist Adrian Zenz, who in turn shared them with SPIEGEL, Bayerischer Rundfunk and other research partners.
Zenz, who has been sanctioned by the Chinese government since 2021, has been instrumental in exposing the camp system in Xinjiang in the past.
For the China expert, who conducts research at the "Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation" in Washington, the Xinjiang Police Files represent a "new dimension". The image material is unique and refutes the Chinese state propaganda that these are "normal schools". act.
slu/ulz/flo/AFP