BEIJING
\nChina has sanctioned two US citizens in retaliation for action taken by Washington over human rights abuses in Tibet, the government said Friday, amid a continuing standoff between the sides over Beijing\u2019s treatment of religious and ethnic minorities.
\nThe Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Todd Stein and Miles Yu Maochun, along with their close family members, would be banned from entering China.
\nAny assets they had in China would be frozen and they would be barred from contact with people or organizations within China.
\nThe notice said the measures were in response to the US sanctioning two Chinese citizens \u201cunder the excuse of the \u2018Tibet human rights\u2019 issue.\u201d Neither could immediately be reached for comment.
\nOn Dec. 9, the US imposed sanctions on Wu Yingjie, the top official in Tibet from 2016 to 2021, and Zhang Hongbo, the region\u2019s police chief since 2018.
\n\u201cOur actions further aim to disrupt and deter the People\u2019s Republic of China\u2019s (PRC) arbitrary detention and physical abuse of members of religious minority groups in the Tibetan Autonomous Region,\u201d Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in announcing the sanctions.
\nAn accompanying Treasury Department notice said Wu had been responsible for \u201cstability policies\u201d in Tibet whose implementation involved \u201cserious human rights abuse, including extrajudicial killings, physical abuse, arbitrary arrests, and mass detentions.\u201d
\nIt said that during Zhang\u2019s tenure, police have been engaged in serious human rights abuses, including \u201ctorture, physical abuse, and killings of prisoners, which included those arrested on religious and political grounds.\u201d
\nThe Chinese announcement gave no specific accusations against Stein and Yu.
\nStein has been deputy staff director at the Congressional-Executive Commission on China since 2021 and previously served as senior adviser to Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights Sarah Sewall, including serving as her lead staffer on Tibetan issues. Previously, he was director of government relations at the monitoring group International Campaign for Tibet.
\nThe Chinese-born Yu is a senior academic who taught at the US Naval Academy and a noted critic of the regime of Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping. He served as key China adviser under former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
\nChina in recent years has passed legislation mandating tit-for-tat sanctions against foreign individuals from the US, the EU and other countries over perceived slights against its national interests. Washington and others have compiled a long list of Chinese officials barred from visiting or engaging in transactions with their financial institutions ranging from the leader of the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong to local officials accused of human rights abuses.
\nChina claims Tibet has been part of its territory for centuries, although backers of the exiled Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama say it was functionally independent for most of that time.
\nCommunist forces invaded in 1950 and China has ruled the Himalayan region with an iron fist ever since, imposing ever stricter surveillance and travel restrictions since the last uprising against Beijing\u2019s rule in 2008. Lengthy prison sentences in dire conditions are imposed for acts of defiance, including defending the region\u2019s unique language and Buddhist culture from attempts at assimilation.
\nChina has also been accused of detaining hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in reeducation camps as part of a campaign to wipe out their native language and culture, including through forced adoptions and sterilizations. China denies such charges, saying it has only been fighting terrorism, separatism and religious extremism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING China has sanctioned two US citizens in retaliation for action taken by Washington over human rights abuses in Tibet, the government said Friday, amid a continuing standoff between the sides over Beijing\u2019s treatment of religious and ethnic minorities. The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Todd Stein and Miles Yu Maochun, along with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303149,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-303131","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n