China Sanctions US NGOs in Response to Hong Kong Bill
China announced sanctions on five U.S. non-government organizations and said U.S. military ships and aircraft will not be allowed to visit Hong Kong, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Dec. 2. The sanctions were in response to the U.S. passage of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law last week (see 1911290012). The sanctioned organizations include the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, Human Rights Watch and Freedom House.
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China vowed last week to retaliate for the passage of the Hong Kong bill, which requires the U.S. to reassess whether Hong Kong merits special customs treatment and whether Hong Kong is violating U.S. sanctions and export controls. China said “a large amount of facts” show that the five U.S. organizations “supported anti-China plotters, saying they are “much to blame for the chaos in Hong Kong” and “played [an] egregious role” in the passage of the Hong Kong bill. China also did not give a time frame for how long it will ban U.S. military ships and planes from visiting Hong Kong. “As for how long the suspension will last,” the spokesperson said, “it depends on how the U.S. acts.”
China may retaliate further as the “situation evolves,” the spokesperson said. “The sanctions are rightly imposed as these organizations shall pay the price for what they’ve done.”
The IRI said China’s decision to impose sanctions is “an act of political relation,” saying it stands with the other organizations who were sanctioned. “This is not the first time [China] has sought to scapegoat others for its own failures of governance,” IRI President Daniel Twining said in a statement. “As recent elections show, the people of Hong Kong know better than to believe such propaganda.”
Human Rights Watch “regrets” China’s decision and will continue to defend human rights in Hong Kong, Executive Director Kenneth Roth said in a statement. “Rather than target an organization that seeks to defend the rights of the people of Hong Kong,” Roth said, “the Chinese government should respect those rights.”
The NDI said the “details” of the sanctions “remain unknown,” according to a statement. The organization said it is committed to continuing to support human rights in Hong Kong. The National Endowment for Democracy said China “falsely” accused it of “instigating the ongoing protests” in Hong Kong and said it had “no information” about what the sanctions entail. Freedom House said China's threat of sanctions is “antithetical to democratic values and universal human rights” and said it does “not look to the Chinese Communist Party for permission to support such legitimate goals.”