TAIPEI, Taiwan – China has announced “countermeasures” against Canadian groups and individuals two weeks after Canada imposed sanctions on senior Chinese officials in early December over human rights concerns.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a press release on Saturday that it was freezing the assets in China of Canada’s Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project and the Canada Tibet Committee.

The ministry, citing China’s Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, said organizations and individuals in China were prohibited from conducting transactions or cooperating with those groups. They would also be barred from travel to China, including Hong Kong and Macau.

The ministry in its announcement did not refer directly to Canada’s Dec. 10 sanctions on eight former and current senior Chinese officials over what Canada said was their involvement in grave human rights violations in Tibet and Xinjiang and against followers of the Falun Gong spiritual sect.

At the time, the Chinese ministry said Canada “smeared and slandered” China and interfered in its internal affairs with its “illegal” sanctions and “clumsy political theatrics.”

Canada is not alone. Western governments have sanctioned China over human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet, citing reports of mass detentions, forced labor, cultural suppression of Uyghurs and Tibetans, and crackdowns on religious and political freedoms. These measures aim to pressure China to uphold international human rights standards.

The United States, for instance, had earlier imposed sanctions on all eight of the Chinese officials that Canada sanctioned, for their connections to serious human rights violations.

Among the most prominent individuals sanctioned by the North Americans was Chen Quanguo, who served as the Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region from 2011 to 2016 and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region from 2016 to 2021.

Another sanctioned official is Wu Yingjie, who was the Communist Party Secretary of Tibet from 2016 to 2021.

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Shane Yi, a researcher with the non-governmental organization Chinese Human Rights Defenders said China’s sanctions against the Canadian groups suggested they were having some impact.

“This not only underscores China’s intent to escalate its suppression efforts but also demonstrates the growing impact of these organizations’ work,” Yi said.

China and Canada have had particularly fraught relations in recent years, largely stemming from the 2018 arrest in Canada of a senior executive of China’s technology giant Huawei.

The executive, Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, was detained in Canada for nearly three years pending U.S. extradition hearings related to suspicion of illegal business dealings with Iran. She flew home to China in 2021 after reaching an agreement with U.S. prosecutors.

Edited by Taejun Kang.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Alan Lu for RFA.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.