Members of the Parliament of the European Union (‘MEPs’) have called out specific human rights abuses in Iran, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, and demanded that the EU institutions and individual Member States take strong action.
With regard to Hong Kong, the MEPs said they condemned ‘the recent forced closure of the Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong, the continued freezing of its assets and the arrests of its journalists.’
They also called on the Hong Kong authorities ‘to stop harassing and intimidating journalists, release arbitrarily detained prisoners,’ and ‘denounce any attempts to muzzle pro-democracy activists and their activities.’ They said that while urging the Chinese authorities ‘to repeal the draconian national security law introduced last year,’ they ‘encourage EU countries to impose sanctions against individuals and entities responsible for serious violations of human rights and international law in Hong Kong under the EU human rights sanctions regime’, and called on the EU institutions and countries to ‘decline invitations to government representatives and diplomats to attend the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics unless the Chinese Government demonstrates a verifiable improvement in the human rights situation in Hong Kong, the Xinjiang Uyghur Region, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and elsewhere in China.’
The MEPS also condemned the recent execution, in Saudi Arabia, of Mustafa Hashem al-Darwish ‘for crimes that may have occurred while he was a minor following his conviction in an unfair trial and involving a confession obtained from him under torture,’ and called on Saudi Arabia ‘to confirm that all other child offenders in the Kingdom, such as death-row inmate Abdullah al-Howaiti, will not be executed and that “confessions” extracted under torture will be excluded from their cases.’
