A Leaders Meeting undeserving of the European Union

China has promised EU leaders to not counterfeit European Agri-products. It has promised to stop stealing our technology and give us more market access in the future. Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel are eager and willing to sign an international agreement with a regime that has broken international agreements just a few months ago by de facto annexing Hong Kong and imprisoning its opposition. A regime that openly and brazenly violates the United Nations Conventions on the Law of the Sea. A regime that commits genocide and tortures millions of Uyghurs in an estimated 500 concentration camps and conducts cultural eradication programs on millions of Tibetans and Mongolians.

Our European leaders gave Xi a pass on all of this on a day of seemingly collective amnesia. We did not demand an independent U.N fact-finding mission in Xinjiang as a pre-condition nor did we set tangible human rights improvements as a condition for an investment agreement that would benefit China with billions of Euro. We did not demand free, fair and independently monitored elections in Hong Kong. Tyrants only respect strength. We must defend China’s countless victims and stand up for our humanist ideals, beyond voicing meaningless “grave concerns”.

Instead, European leaders must build and strengthen economic, diplomatic and military cooperation with our friends in Taiwan, Japan and Korea. Our businesses and capital cannot continue to support a dystopian digital surveillance regime. To meet and cooperate with Xi now is a clear sign to all who suffer worldwide from the expansionist and cruel policies of the Chinese Communist Party. It is a signal that the European Union stands side by side with this inhuman regime. A very wrong signal.