Boris Johnson has condemned China’s sanctions against outspoken MPs and other British citizens, saying: “I stand firmly with them.” It comes after Beijing punished critics, including former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, in a tit-for-tat response to UK sanctions over China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims.
Foreign secretary Dominic Raab on Monday announced a package of travel bans and asset freezes against four senior officials and the state-run Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Public Security Bureau (XPCC PSB), after labelling the abuse “one of the worst human rights crises of our time”. The US, EU and Canada did the same.
But China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement this morning the move was “based on nothing but lies and disinformation” and would sanction nine politicians and four British institutions as a result.
Meanwhile former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond has announced he is launching a new political party to fight the 6 May Scottish parliament elections. The Alba Party will be a list party under his leadership, he said, which seeks to “promote new ideas about taking Scotland forward, giving primacy to economic recovery from the pandemic and the achievement of independence for our country”.
The SNP, Mr Salmond’s former party, denounced the move as “the most predictable development in Scottish politics for quite some time”.
