The government of the People’s Republic of China has blacklisted an individual from Iceland, after the island nation joined the European Union in sanctioning Chinese officials over human rights abuses in Xinjiang Province, international news agencies are reporting, and the individual has been identified as a retired lawyer who wrote “negative” articles about the communist regime, according to the Icelandic press.
The European Union imposed sanctions on four Chinese officials last month for human rights abuses on the native Uighur people in the Central Asian, Chinese-ruled territory of Xinjiang, leading to tit-for-tat sanctions on Europeans by Beijing.
The European sanctions included travel bans and asset-freezes on four senior Chinese officials, according to Reuters, who noted that the EU had not imposed such significant sanctions on China since 1989 (Reuters managed to avoid mentioning the Tiananmen Square Massacre, which was the actual reason for the sanctions, but was is now merely reduced to a calendar year-number in Reuters reports).