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U.S., E.U., Canada, Britain announce sanctions on China over abuse of Uyghurs

InternationalMar 23. 2021Secretary of State Antony Blinken

By The Washington Post · Emily Rauhala

The United States, the European Union, Britain and Canada each announced sanctions against China over human rights abuses in Xinjiang, a coordinated effort aimed at holding Beijing accountable for a years-long campaign against Uyghurs and other minority groups in the northwestern Chinese region.

The diplomatic push, announced Monday, comes after a tense meeting between U.S. and Chinese officials and amid growing calls for democracies to work together to take on an increasingly authoritarian and assertive Beijing.

The European Union was first to move, saying early Monday that it would punish four Chinese officials and the Xinjiang public security bureau with travel bans and freeze their assets – its most significant measures since an arms embargo after the 1989 killings in Tiananmen Square.

China quickly responded, leveling similar measures against a long list of its European critics.

Not long after, the United States, Canada and Britain jumped in. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced midday that the United States will add two names to its existing Xinjiang sanctions list.

Britain committed for the first time to freeze assets and ban travel for the same Chinese officials as the European Union did, as well as a Xinjiang security body. Canada said it would sanction the same officials and security body as Britain did.

The U.S., British and Canadian statements stressed that the moves were the result of close cooperation. “We stand united with the UK, Canada, and the EU in promoting accountability for those who abuse human rights,” Blinken wrote in a tweet.

Although the sanctions are largely symbolic, they are sure to complicate ties between China and the rest of the world.

Under President Donald Trump, the United States vowed to take a strong stance on China, but for the most part it did so alone. The Biden administration has stressed the importance of rallying allies to the cause, saying the scale of the challenge requires collective action. Monday’s moves appear to be a step in that direction.

The E.U. sanctions focus on four senior Chinese officials involved in designing and implementing policy in Xinjiang, as well as the region’s much-feared public security bureau.

The British list targets the same senior officials but names a different security entity.

Neither the European Union list nor the British one includes the Chinese Communist Party’s top official in the region, Chen Quanguo, who was named in more-robust U.S. sanctions last year.

Despite extensive reporting, satellite imagery and witness testimony, Beijing denies human rights abuses in Xinjiang, claiming that Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims are thriving there.

The countermeasures it issued Monday took aim at outspoken members of the European Parliament; Dutch, Belgian and Lithuanian officials; a prominent German think tank focused on China; a Danish foundation; and two European scholars known for their work regarding the Xinjiang region.

The sanctions block those on the list and their families from traveling to the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong or Macao, or from doing business with China, according to a news release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The news release condemns the officials for “lies” about the “so-called human rights issues in Xinjiang.”

Raphaël Glucksmann, a French member of the European Parliament who has spoken out on Xinjiang, tweeted Monday that he considered the sanction a “badge of honor.”

In recent months, Europe has been accused of standing idle while the United States took the lead on issues such as Xinjiang.

Late last year, the European Union and China reached an agreement in principle on a much-delayed investment pact, a move seen as a diplomatic victory for Beijing and a snub to the incoming Biden administration.

Critics of that deal asked why Europe was knitting itself closer to an increasingly authoritarian China rather than tackling issues the European Union says it cares about, including forced labor. The fate of that deal remains uncertain.

In the run-up to Monday’s announcement, China’s Communist Party-controlled media warned that there will be “no escape” for “some EU institutions and poorly behaving individuals” if the bloc pressed ahead.

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Vaccine battle heats up with EU ready to halt U.K. shipments

InternationalMar 23. 2021A health worker administers the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine to a visitor at a vaccination center in Rome on March 17, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Alessia Pierdomenico.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Nikos Chrysoloras, Suzi Ring, Joe Mayes

The European Union is ready to start withholding Covid-19 shots from the U.K., risking a sharp deterioration in relations with London in a bid to turn around its lackluster vaccination campaign.

The EU will likely reject authorizations to export AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccines and their ingredients to the U.K. until the drugmaker fulfills its delivery obligations to the 27-nation bloc, according to a senior EU official.

The conflict between the EU and the U.K. has been growing since Astra informed Brussels it wouldn’t deliver the number of shots it had promised for the first quarter. Both sides have blamed each other for export curbs and nationalism, posing a risk to the fragile post-Brexit trade relationship agreed on in December. Astra has been at the center of the EU’s vaccination problems since production issues emerged in January. Most recently, its shot was temporarily suspended in much of Europe over blood-clot fears.

While the EU drug regulator backed the vaccine last week, and U.S. trial results published Monday said there were no safety concerns, public trust in the shot has plummeted in Europe. The majority of people in Germany, France, Italy and Spain now see the vaccine as unsafe, a survey by YouGov published by The Telegraph on Monday shows.

The EU, which has pledged to immunize 70% of adults by the end of September, is struggling to overcome a slow start to its inoculation campaign. The bloc has administered 12 doses per 100 people, less than a third of what the U.K. has managed, according to Bloomberg’s Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker. The U.K. vaccinated more than 1.5 million people on Friday and Saturday, setting daily records on successive days.

The European Commission said last week that it would restrict exports of vaccines to countries that don’t reciprocate or that already have high vaccination rates. The U.K. is the largest recipient of doses made in the EU, receiving 10 million of 42 million shots from the bloc so far.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke last week and a new round of high-level diplomacy is expected among leaders ahead of a summit in Brussels.

“Vaccine nationalism, this kind of breathless speculation about limiting supply doesn’t do anybody any good,” Helen Whately, a junior U.K. health minister, told Sky News on Monday. Von der Leyen “made a commitment to the prime minister that the EU wouldn’t block companies from fulfilling their contractual obligations to supply vaccinations,” she said, urging the EU to “actively stand by that commitment.”

According to the EU official, the bloc has contracts with Astra that aren’t being respected, and any vaccines and their ingredients produced in European factories will be reserved for local deliveries. The official asked not to be named because the decisions are under consideration and haven’t been made public.

EU leaders meeting this week will discuss the plan. Countries including Italy and France said they were open to exploring the export ban while others, such as Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands, urged caution and warned about the impact on European companies, according to a diplomatic note seen by Bloomberg.

AstraZeneca — one of four approved in the bloc — is now expected to deliver 30 million shots to the EU by the end of this month, less than half of what it initially committed to.

Johnson has called EU leaders about the dispute in recent days, including Dutch premier Mark Rutte and Belgium’s Alexander De Croo, and is prepared for more conversations before this week’s summit, a person familiar with the matter said.

Pfizer warned that the free movement of supplies between the U.K. and the EU is critical to the production of its vaccine. Manufacturing of lipids — the fatty substance used to deliver the genetic material at the heart of the vaccine Pfizer makes with its German partner BioNTech — takes place at a secret location in the U.K. before shipping to the EU where the shots are completed.

The EU official added that there are no outstanding requests for U.K. exports from Astra’s production facility in the Netherlands, but should such a request be made, it will likely be rejected. A production plant in the Netherlands and one in Belgium produce ingredients for the Astra shot.

“The Netherlands in principle allows exports to continue until told otherwise by the European Commission,” the Dutch government said Sunday. “It is of paramount importance that Brussels, London and AstraZeneca reach a deal promptly on the vaccines produced by the company in facilities falling under both contracts.”

The EU isn’t alone in having supply issues. The U.K. is facing a “significant” four-week cut to the supply of Covid-19 vaccines from late March. A delayed shipment of the Astra vaccine from India and a batch requiring re-testing are behind the disruption.

U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told Sky News on Sunday that the EU should allow Astra to keep supplying Britain and warned the bloc would pay a heavy price if it tried to interfere with those shipments.

“The commission knows deep down that this would be counterproductive,” he said. “They’re under tremendous political pressure at the European Commission. It would damage the EU’s relations globally.” A spokesperson for Johnson’s office declined to comment and referred back to Wallace’s remarks.

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Contentious hunt for covid’s origin points to China animal trade

InternationalMar 23. 2021

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jason Gale, Corinne Gretler

Scientists tracing the origins of the covid-19 pandemic believe they’ve identified a possible transmission source: China’s thriving wildlife trade.

The highly anticipated findings from experts convened by the World Health Organization and the Chinese government are expected to show parallels to the 2002 spawning of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, a bat-borne coronavirus spread by civets that killed 800 people. The path trod by SARS-CoV-2, as the new coronavirus is known, before it emerged in December 2019 in central China remains a mystery, though it’s one researchers say can be solved.

In Wuhan, where the first cluster of cases occurred, scientists involved in the hunt identified four hypotheses to explain the virus’s genesis, including two that stoked controversy even as they were deemed unlikely. The idea that the virus was introduced via contaminated food or packaging is one embraced in Beijing, while the Trump administration said it may have been the result of a laboratory accident. But the most plausible theory, say experts involved in the mission, concerns China’s wildlife trade for food, furs and traditional medicine, a business worth about $80 billion (520 billion yuan) in 2016.

Live animals susceptible to coronavirus infection were present at the Huanan food market in downtown Wuhan, the city where the first major covid-19 outbreak was detected. It’s possible they acted as conduits for the virus, carrying it from bats — likely the primary source — to humans, says Peter Daszak, a zoologist who was part of the joint research effort, which saw international experts visit Wuhan earlier this year after months of stonewalling by the Chinese government.

“The main conclusion from this stage of the work — and it’s not over yet of course — is that the exact same pathway by which SARS emerged was alive and well for the emergence of covid,” said Daszak, who is also president of EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit that works to prevent viral outbreaks around the world.

The scientists’ report, slated for release this week after delays due to political wrangling, is likely to be far from conclusive. More studies are planned, including outside China, with deciphering covid-19’s creation story vital to understanding how best to thwart its resurgence, and to help avert similar catastrophes in the future.

China is Making It Harder to Solve the Mystery of Where covid Began

While the hunt for the virus’s origin has become political football for the world’s superpowers, Daszak says he thinks the scientific process will prevail. Significant data on where SARS-CoV-2 came from and how it emerged will be uncovered over the next few years, he said during a March 10 webinar organized by Chatham House.

Farmed and wild-caught civets, a small, nocturnal mammal consumed in China, were blamed for spreading the SARS virus in a market in the southern province of Guangdong in 2003. Scientists later found the infection originated in horseshoe bats, a natural reservoir of coronaviruses.

The two species likely collided in markets where live animals are caged in crowded conditions, potentially allowing the bat-borne virus to adapt and amplify before it spilled over to humans, initially among workers and those handling the animals.

Scientists working on the origin hunt say a similar scenario may have played out with covid-19. A study of the first 99 patients treated at an infectious diseases hospital in Wuhan found half were linked to the Huanan seafood market, which also reportedly sold live animals, some illegally captured in the wild and slaughtered in front of customers.

It’s possible the virus was introduced through an infected animal that was sold at the Huanan market or somewhere else in Wuhan, said Dominic Dwyer, a microbiologist in Sydney who was part of the WHO-convened team that traveled to the Chinese city in February.

Still, questions remain about the market’s ultimate role.

Testing after it was shut down in December 2019 failed to turn up any infected animals. Contaminated surfaces were widespread, compatible with the virus being introduced via infected people or tainted animal products. Compounding the confusion, the first known covid-19 patient developed symptoms four days before the earliest cases tied to the market.

An analysis of SARS-CoV-2 samples collected in mid-December found subtle genetic differences between them. The variation indicates the virus may have circulated surreptitiously for weeks in the community before doctors were alerted to it via a handful of severely ill patients with a mysterious viral pneumonia.

The original spillover of the coronavirus to a human was probably followed by rapid adaptation of the virus, said Joel Wertheim, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego. It’s possible the virus was transmitted multiple times and went extinct when infected individuals didn’t transmit the virus to anyone, Wertheim and colleagues said in a paper published March 18 in the journal Science. Eventually, the virus infected someone who passed it to several people, who also passed it on to others, possibly in a super-spreading event.

The Huanan market may have been where that occurred, Wertheim said in an interview. “The market may have been key to the virus ensconcing itself in humans.”

Current evidence suggests the market is where SARS-CoV-2 was amplified, and not necessarily its birthplace, Dwyer said.

“When you visit the market, you realize that it’s a perfect place for an outbreak to occur because it’s crowded, lots of stalls, lots of animal products, and ventilation and drainage are a bit suboptimal,” he said in an interview. “It’s not surprising we had an explosion through there.”

The WHO research team found evidence that wildlife farms in southern China were supplying vendors at the Huanan market, Daszak told National Public Radio. It also found a route from southern provinces such as Yunnan — where the closest known coronavirus to SARS-CoV-2 was found in horseshoe bats in 2013 — to Wuhan, he said on the Chatham House webinar.

“It provides a link and a pathway by which a virus could convincingly spill over from wildlife into either people or animals farmed in the region, and then shipped into a market by some means,” Daszak said. “That’s a really important clue. Those beginnings of an understanding of a pathway need to be followed up pretty rapidly.”

For decades, the government of China promoted the farming of wildlife to bolster rural incomes. The practice provided an especially valuable alternative source of meat after African swine fever emerged in 2018. The deadly outbreak resulted in an unprecedented shortage of pork, researchers at the South China Agricultural University and University of Glasgow said in a study that was released in February without a formal peer-review. China typically consumes half the world’s pig meat.

While the pork shortage bolstered wildlife consumption, eating birds, snakes, bamboo rats, squirrels, porcupines and other nondomesticated animals was already popular, especially in southern provinces, the researchers said.

They cited a 2004 survey by the China Wildlife Conservation Association that found 46% of urban residents had consumed wildlife and 2.7% were regular consumers. A January 2017 survey found 52% of markets they investigated were trading wildlife, while 40% of restaurants were providing wild animal dishes.

Much of the trade supposedly ended just over a year ago. After President Xi Jinping warned that the consumption of wildlife posed an immense risk to public health, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress decided on Feb. 24, 2020, to expand the scope of China’s Wildlife Protection Law to ban the consumption of almost all wild animals.

Amid international criticism of its handling of the early days of the pandemic, China’s official rhetoric is focused on creating doubt that the pathogen originated within its borders. But China targeted the wildlife trade a year ago for a reason, Daszak told NPR.

“The reason was, back in February 2020, they believed this was the most likely pathway” for the coronavirus to reach Wuhan, he said. “And when the WHO report comes out…we believe it’s the most likely pathway too.”