Hungary slams EU sanctions against Myanmar, China as ‘pointless and harmful’

Hungary sees the European Union’s sanctions against persons and institutions in Myanmar and China as “pointless, self-aggrandising and harmful”, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in Brussels on Monday.

Myanmar activists find new ways to protest as EU prepares sanctions on junta

At least 250 people have been killed so far in anti-junta protests which the security forces are trying to stamp out, according to figures from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners activist group.

“The number of murders has reached an unbearable extent, which is why we will not be able to avoid imposing sanctions,”

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told reporters as he arrived in Brussels for a meeting with his EU counterparts.

The names of 11 people involved in the coup and repression of demonstrators will be made public after the meeting, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.

They would be the bloc’s most significant response to the coup so far.

According to diplomats and two internal documents seen by Reuters last week, the EU is also planning to target companies “generating revenue for, or providing financial support to, the Myanmar Armed Forces”.

“We don’t intend to punish the people of Myanmar but those who blatantly violate human rights,” Maas said.

A spokesman for the junta did not respond to calls seeking comment. He has previously said security forces have used force only when necessary.

The Southeast Asian nation has been locked in crisis since the elected government led by Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was overthrown by the military on Feb 1.

The violence has forced many citizens to think up novel ways to express their rejection of a return to army rule.

CAR HORNS, SHOTS

In downtown areas of the commercial capital Yangon, motorists honked car horns in response to a call on social media to mark the one-month anniversary of the launch of one of the biggest demonstrations since the coup.

In the western town of Mindat in Chin state, protesters planted scores of posters in a square in front of the main market saying “Military dictatorship must fail”.

In the latest violence, one person was killed in the country’s second city of Mandalay, aid workers and news reports said.

Four people were killed and several wounded in the city on Sunday when security forces opened fire after residents tried to resist efforts by the military to set up a base in a school, the Myanmar Now news portal reported.

One man was shot dead and several were wounded when police opened fire on a group setting up a barricade in the central town of Monywa, a doctor there said on Sunday as a community group issued a call on Facebook for blood donors.

“Sniper, sniper,” people can be heard shouting in a video clip shortly after the man was shot in the head in Monywa and more shots rang out.

State media said on Sunday that men on motorcycles attacked a member of the security forces who later died. The military said two policemen were killed in earlier protests.

Hungarian FM reacts

Speaking to Hungarian press on the sidelines of a meeting of EU foreign ministers, Szijjártó said such strategic decisions were “particularly senseless” at a time when international cooperation was gaining special significance as “a tool to save lives rather than [introducing] austerity measures”.

The sanctions will further poison EU-China ties, relations the former could profit from greatly “if cooperation could be based on rational thinking,” Szijjártó said.

The EU approved sanctions against 11 Myanmar citizens and four legal entities registered in that country, in response to their role in the coup in the country on February 1, or in the bloody repercussions against demonstrations there. The sanctions list also contains four Chinese citizens.

Regarding the Cotonou Agreement between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP), Szijjártó said it has “become a pro-migration agreement aimed at increasing migration pressure on the bloc’s member states.”

Szijjártó said the agreement, which is being extended after its expiration in December 2020, “completely ignores the new reality that millions of people have lost their jobs in Europe”. “Now is not the time to inspire people from the [ACP] region to come to Europe,” he said.

The EU’s priority should be to tackle the challenges closer to home and to create jobs for everyone who have lost theirs due to the coronavirus pandemic, he said.

Szijjártó also noted that the European Commission planned to approve the document in a way that would not need the ratification of idividual member states.

Hungary will fight against such a procedure with all tools at its disposal, he said, and called it unacceptable that “Brussels should launch a new attack to ramp up migration in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.”

“We insist on national parliaments having a say in whether they want to ratify a pro-migration document,” he added.

Commenting on talks between the EU foreign affairs council and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Szijjártó said Hungary was deeply committed to protecting human rights, including the rights of ethnic minorities.

The rights of ethnic minorities are being “employed discriminatively” in international politics, Szijjártó said. “They try to ignore” the rights of religious and national minorities contrary to the rights of “other kinds of minorities”, he said. Meanwhile, the rights of ethnic minorities is violated in many places around the world, he said.

Szijjártó cited Ukraine as an example, saying that “systematic violations” of the rights of Hungarian ethnic minorities were ongoing there.

“We expect the UN and the EU to be at least as vocal on this issue as they are on real or alleged human rights abuses a thousand kilometres away. We expect them to champion the rights of ethnic minorities at least as strongly as those of other minorities,” Szijjártó said.

Although Christians are among the most persecuted religious communities around the world, that fact is barely noted in international documents, he said.

Hungary wants this discriminative practice to stop, he said.

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Source: MTI/Reuters