UK Parliament Approves Commons
Motion
Declaring Uyghur Muslim Genocide
Dr Mozammel Haque
UK Parliamentarians have approved
a House of Commons motion which declares Uyghur Muslims and other minorities
are ‘suffering crimes against humanity and genocide in Xinjiang province.
Conservative former Minister Ms
Nusrat Ghani, one of the five MPs sanctioned by China for criticising its
treatment of the Uyghurs, moved the proposal and insisted the UK must take
action. The motion was discussed,
debated and voted and ultimately the House approved the motion and declared
China is committing genocide against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province of
China.
Nigel dams, the Asia Minister,
admitted there was credible evidence of widesptread use of forced labour,
internment camps and the targetting of ethnic groups.
In a statement following the
approval of the motion, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, said: “This is a historic
moment, Even though the Government maintains that only a court can determine
genocide, Parliament has chosen to disregard that and vote itself.
Conservative Member for Wealden, Ms Nusrat Ghani made a historic motion on Uyghur Human Rights at the House of Commons in the British Parliament.
She said, "Today’s historic debate would not have been possible
without a key ally to the Uyghurs, and the one sponsor of the debate who would
have been so proud of us all here today for doing the right thing—I hope—at 5
o’ clock. That is my mentor and dear friend, the late Dame Cheryl Gillan. Dame
Cheryl was a phenomenal woman—a woman who kept men in this place in their
place, and I wish the record to note that this debate is in her honour. I hope
that today this House will do her proud."
Chinese Communist Party sanctioned five MPs
Nusrat Ghani is one of the five MPs sanctioned by the
Chinese Communist party. Those sanctions were an attempt to silence and
intimidate us, to prevent us from raising the growing evidence of the abuse
faced by the Uyghurs.
Ms Ghani
Conservative Member for Wealden, Ms Nusrat Ghani, said, “I
believe that sanctioning five MPs for raising human rights abuses was
sanctioning this House and asking it to stop raising human rights abuses in
Xinjiang. The whole House needs to act as one.
She continued: “The fact that we are here today, having
this debate, shows that the sanctions simply have not worked. I can only assume
that my sanctions followed my campaigning on the genocide amendment to the
Trade Bill, and my Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee report,
which exposed that Xinjiang is a Uyghur slave state, and recommends that we
blacklist UK firms putting slave-made products on our shelves. As we all know,
basic checks and transparency standards cannot be guaranteed in Xinjiang, so
businesses find it difficult to guarantee that they are slave labour-free. Let
us just cut to the chase and blacklist firms who are linked to Xinjiang unless
they are, uniquely, able to offer adequate proof that they are slave
labour-free. The British customer does not want to be duped into putting money
in the pocket of firms profiting from slave labour. I hope the Minister can
wholeheartedly support the rest of the recommendations in the Select Committee
report.
She maintained: “I also want to put on record my thanks and
offer solidarity to Dr Jo Smith Finley, a senior academic who was also
sanctioned for sharing what she witnessed in Xinjiang, along with a legal firm
and research group. When the CCP tries to control UK groups and individuals speaking freely
about their research and legal opinions, it is our responsibility and duty to
speak truth to power in this place, where we are afforded protection that
others may not have.
Nusrat Ghani said, “The sanctions are not only an attack on
us as individuals but an attempt to stifle the free and open debate that is at
heart of our hard-won parliamentary democracy. If the CCP is still in doubt
about what our leadership thinks of the sanctions, let me quote our very own
Prime Minister, who said:“Freedom to speak out in opposition to abuse is
fundamental and I stand firmly with them.”.
Grounds for Genocide met?
Ms Nusrat Ghani said, “Today, I am asking the House to
consider whether the grounds for genocide are met. I know that colleagues are
reluctant to use the word “genocide”. For many, the word will be forever
associated with the horrors of Nazi concentration camps. I agree with
colleagues that we should never diminish the unique meaning and power of the
term by applying it incorrectly, but there is a misunderstanding that genocide
is just one act—mass killing.
That is false. Article 2 of the United Nations genocide
convention says that genocide is “any of the following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group”. Following the publishing of that opinion, the CCP sanctioned
the chambers. Act 2 is: “Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of
the group”.
Nusrat Ghani argued, “Fifty legal experts in international
law have determined that every marker of genocide is met. The Newlines
Institute for Strategy and Policy found: “Uyghurs are suffering serious bodily
and mental harm from systematic torture and cruel treatment, including rape,
sexual abuse, exploitation, and public humiliation, at the hands of camp
officials and Han cadres assigned to Uyghur homes under Government-mandated
programs. Internment camps contain designated ‘interrogation rooms,’ where Uyghur
detainees are subjected to consistent and brutal torture methods, including
beatings with metal prods, electric shocks, and whips. The mass internment and
related Government programs are designed to indoctrinate and ‘wash clean’
brains.”
Ms Nusrat Ghani maintained, “That is from 50 global
experts. Act 3 of genocide is: “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions
of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in
part”.President Xi has said so many words, including about showing “absolutely
no mercy”. How is he doing that? Credible reports indicate that up to 2 million
people are extrajudicially detained in prison factories and re-education
centres, and I dread to think of the impact of a lack of proper medical care
during a pandemic.
Ms Nusrat Ghani said, “Act 4 is imposing measures intended
to prevent births within a group. Unless the Minister can provide evidence to
the contrary, I do not believe there is any other place on earth where women
are being violated on this scale. “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a fairytale compared
with the reproductive rights of Uyghur women. That abuse is evidenced by the
Chinese Government’s own data. In 2014, more than 200,000 birth control devices
were inserted in women in Xinjiang, and by 2018 the number had increased by
60%. Despite the region accounting for just 1.8% of China’s population, 80% of
all birth control device insertions in China were performed in the Uyghur
region. That explains why, in one of the region, birth rates are down 84%. Even
more chillingly, China no longer shares the data by ethnicity, as it tries to
scrub away the evidence. Time is running out for the Uyghur, especially the
women.
She continued, “Finally, act 5: forcibly transferring the
children of the group to another group. This unique barbarism of the CCP is a
slow-motion genocide. It is hard to believe that it is doing that as a final
act of horror. The New York Times reported, from
public CCP data, that nearly half a million children have been separated from
their families. That is key, as it shows the CCP’s intent to strip children
from their parents, basically disrupting intergenerational linguistic, cultural
and faith transmission. Let me quote the CCP again: “Break their lineage, break
their roots”.
I do not expect the Minister to have any arguments to
dispute any of the evidence that I have put forward today. I do expect to hear
from the Dispatch Box, considering the crimes, how the Foreign Office will
fully co-operate with the independent Uyghur tribunal of Sirusb Geoffrey Nice,
QC.”
Ms Nusrat Ghani said, “We are not alone. Countries around
the world are declaring genocide, and Parliaments in Europe are watching us
today and will take our lead. At a previous genocide debate, when we were
shamefully denied a vote, I quoted the late Rabbi Sacks. When he was asked
where was God during the holocaust, he responded that the question is not:
where was God? The question is: where was man? Men and women in this House—the
mother of all Parliaments—will do all we can to ensure that atrocities like the
holocaust can never again take place.”
Yasmin Qureshi
Labour Member for Bolton South East, Yasmin Qureshi, said,
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani). I
congratulate her on obtaining this debate and on the excellent work she has
been doing with the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee and on
the Trade Bill. As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Uyghurs, I
pay tribute to the many colleagues who have been working with us over the past
few years to raise awareness of the seriousness of the situation in Xinjiang.
She continued, “Secondly, the Minister will know that Sir
Geoffrey Nice, QC, has convened a tribunal to conduct an independent and
credible interrogation of the evidence. Will he confirm that the Government
will do everything possible to co-operate with the Uyghur tribunal, including
providing evidence and agreeing to take seriously what will be a rigorous and
impartial judgment when the process is complete? Our all-party parliamentary
group has written to the Minister about this twice but so far has received no
response.
Yasmin Qureshi maintained, “Thirdly, we know that in 2016
Beijing installed Chen Quanguo as secretary of Xinjiang. Within a year, he had
turned it into probably the world’s most heavily policed region. When the
Government finally announced the Magnitsky sanctions, why did they leave out
the organ grinder, Chen Quanguo? He is believed to be the architect of the
Xinjiang atrocities and, indeed, those in Tibet. We are now in a position of
having sanctioned the entity he runs and helped to turn into an instrument of
oppression—the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps—but not Quanguo
himself. Surely the Minister must see that this is not rational. The United
States has sanctioned him. Will this Government commit today to sanctioning him
as well?
Yasmin Qureshi mentioned, “When I set up the APPG on Uyghurs
in 2019, I was contacted by an official from the Chinese embassy, who I agreed
to meet in order to discuss the then recently built internment camps. The
Chinese official was quick to remind me that the west has no moral high ground
to lecture China, given our own interventions in history—indeed, he sent me
several emails to that effect—but to engage in whataboutery is to deny and
distract from the point.
She said, “Since 1948, we have witnessed genocides in
Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, northern Iraq and now China and Myanmar. That
is not an exhaustive list. Indeed, some grave crimes against humanity go
unreported in the mainstream media and are never classified as genocide. The
response to these atrocities has always been inadequate. Whenever a genocide
takes place, there is a collective wringing of hands, but the promise to break
the relentless and devastating cycle of genocide has never materialised. How
many times have we heard the words “never again”?
Ysmin Qureshi said, “This has gone on long enough. The
Minister will be aware that the United States has recognised this as genocide.
The Canadian House of Commons, the Dutch Parliament and others have declared it
to be genocide. A 25,000-page report by over 50 international lawyers says that
what is happening in Xinjiang is genocide, with every single one of the
criteria in the 1948 United Nations convention on the prevention and punishment
of the crime of genocide being breached. The UK’s policy on genocide risks us
defaulting on our obligation under the genocide convention. Let us pass this
motion today, and I urge the Government to act on it.”
Sir Iain Duncan
Smith
(Chingford and
Woodford Green) (Con)
Conservative Member for Chingford and Woodford Green, Sir
Iain Duncan Smith, said, “I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for
Wealden (Ms Ghani) on securing this debate and leading on the BEIS Committee
inquiry and the excellent report on which this debate is based. It is a remarkable
feat to have done both.”
Sir Smith said, “I want to make sure that when we talk
about China and the environment, we no longer try to use it as a balancing
point for why we should not take action against China in areas such as the
genocide against Uyghur women, the treatment of Tibetans, the appalling
treatment of inner Mongolians, the treatment of Christians, the organ
harvesting of the Falun Gong and the treatment of other groups. All are abuses
that must be called out: whether or not we need China to co-operate on other
matters, we cannot simply say that one matter is worth some sacrifice over the
other. It is not, and I for one will continue to call that out.
He said, “Let me come back to the main points of the debate,
which are the ones raised by the Select Committee. They are really important
points and my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden touched on a number of them. I
wish to highlight a couple. First, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, whose inquiry is
ongoing, has said that his inquiry is “certain—unanimously, and sure beyond
reasonable doubt—that in China forced organ harvesting from prisoners of
conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time involving a very
substantial number of victims.”
Sir Smith mentioned, “That is the organ harvesting of
victims in the power of the state. I thought that we, collectively as nations,
decided never ever to see this happen again. In the 1940s, Nazi Germany
practised organ harvesting and strange science on people in captivity—mostly
the Jewish people, but others, too. How can we hear that and lock it away in a
box? It is astonishing that we should even be thinking that it is just an item
for debate. It is not. It is redolent of the terrible times that we and others
went through, and we decided never again. But it is again, and on an industrial
scale.
He continued, “The Conservative party human rights
commission report shows four years of human rights deterioration in China
between 2016 and 2020. The Select Committee report clearly identifies how
Uyghur slave labour operates in supply chains. As my hon. Friend the Member for
Wealden said, the 84% drop in birth rates is significant and shows
categorically that forced sterilisation is taking place.
He mentioned, “There are others out there who have been
brave enough to call this out. BBC journalists covering mass rape and Uyghur
abuse have been driven out of China. I see that even Sky faced up the other day
and produced a report about the slave labour and the fact that these people,
particularly men, are thousands of miles away from their homes in factories
that are hidden from view and denied, but there they are—it is slave labour,
forced labour. The Better Cotton Initiative withdrew from the region in October
2020, citing:“Sustained allegations of forced labour and other human rights
abuses” leading to an increasingly untenable operating environment”.
Sir Iain Smith said, “That is the reality of a wealthy,
powerful country that intends to be wealthier and more powerful—perhaps the
dominant economy and dominant military power—and that believes it can get away
with anything. So far, too often, it has. That is the point of this debate and
what the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden was all about. She
clearly laid out the definition of genocide: killing members of the group,
causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately
inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent
birth within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to
another group. These are the definitions of genocide. On every one of those
counts we have evidence to show that a genocide is taking place, specifically
of the Uyghur people, but very likely, as I said, of others like the Tibetans
as well. We know that the Chinese have been killing members of the group and
causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. All these things
are going on.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith said, “If we believe that there is
evidence on every one of those counts, the question is: why have we not
declared this a genocide? I urge my hon. Friend the Minister and the Government
to rethink their position on this. We will not gain any particular friendship
by not calling out genocide from the Chinese. It is simply not a tradeable
item. The UK has said endlessly, and I understand this, that only a
competent court can declare a genocide. That was absolutely the original plan, but
the problem is that getting to a competent court is impossible. At the United
Nations it is impossible to get to the International Court of Justice. It is
impossible to get to the International Criminal Court because China is not a
signatory to that and therefore will not obey it, and anyway we will not be
able to do that because it will be blocked in the debates at the UN. The whole
purpose of the belt and road project is to protect China from any action taken
at the UN. It has now collected a coalition of nations that are being given
huge sums of money by it. In many cases, they vote with it in the UN regardless
on matters like these.
He continued, “Therefore, we have a problem—how can we get
there? The only way, really, is what other countries have taken to doing now.
The United States has made it clear that it believes that this is a genocide.
Holland has followed suit and so has Canada. I hope, therefore, that today we
will do so too. If we think that the American Administration that has just come
in is going to somehow walk away from the previous Administration on this, it
is worth quoting what is being said in the United States. The new Secretary of
State, Antony Blinken, said: “My judgment remains”— he is referring to the
statement by Mike Pompeo, his predecessor— “that genocide was committed against
the Uyghurs and that has not changed.”
He mentioned, “So now two Administrations in America line
up behind this and still stand up for it. On 22 February 2021, Canada’s
Parliament voted unanimously on a motion to declare the situation in Xinjiang a
genocide. On 25 February 2021, the Dutch Parliament, the States General, passed
a non-binding motion declaring that the treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang
amounts to a genocide. What do we have to know? We have to have significant
reports, witness testaments, satellite imagery and Chinese local governmental
data, and we have all of that. It is out there in the public domain now, and
more and more is being collated.
Sir Iain Smith said, “Let us think a little bit about the
victims, whose relatives are out on the square today protesting about their
treatment, and who speak terribly of what has happened. The former detainee
Tursunay Ziawudun said that every night they were removed from their cells and
raped by one or more masked Chinese men. She went on to say that she was
tortured and later gang-raped on three occasions, each time by two or three
men. That is the evidence that we need as part of our statement that this is a
genocide, and that evidence exists. That is but one of a whole series of people
who have given such evidence, so we have to hold China to account.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith said, “I conclude by saying to my
hon. Friend that, today, this Parliament has a historic chance,
together—regardless of party difference in most other matters—to hold its head
up, stand tall and stand for those who have no voice. We, the mother of all
Parliaments, should today take pride in the fact that if this motion goes
through unopposed, it is the voice of the United Kingdom Parliament—the
Parliament of a free people, who believe in human rights and in freedom and
human rights for others around the world. Let us make the statement today, loud and clear, that
the UK has not forgotten the Uyghurs and others, and that we will stand for
them and insist that our Government do exactly the same by calling this a
genocide.”
Afzal Khan
(Manchester,
Gorton) (Lab) [V]
Labour Member for Manchester, Gorton, Afzal Khan, said, “I
congratulate the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) on securing this debate and
on all the work that she has been doing on this matter. The most distressing
and horrific persecution taking place today is that of the Uyghur Muslims in
Xinjiang, China. I remind the House that Muslims are currently observing the
holy month of Ramadan—a month of fasting, reflection, charity and prayer. It
pains me that millions of Uyghur Muslims are facing some of the harshest abuses
that one can imagine during this holy period.
Afzal Khan mentioned, “As vice-chair of the all-party group
on Uyghurs, I have been highlighting the plight of Uyghur Muslims for several
years and have heard, at first hand, harrowing testimonies from survivors,
family members and those who have witnessed what I can only call inhumane and
chilling human rights abuses. The Chinese Government appear to be engaged in
what some experts are calling a campaign of demographic genocide. I fear that
the gravity of my words and efforts are simply not being matched by the world’s
reaction and, more worryingly, by this very Government.
He continued, “Members know already that the persecution of
the Uyghurs is not new. For decades, they have faced repression at the hands of
the Chinese Government, but it has escalated to an entirely new scale. Report
after report has highlighted the mounting evidence of human rights abuses and
shown that Beijing has violated each and every act banned by the United Nations
convention against genocide. The action that the Chinese authorities are taking
in Xinjiang contravenes China’s own constitutional provisions on freedom of
religion and its obligation under the 1948 universal declaration of human
rights.
Afzal Khan mentioned, “The Foreign Secretary said in
January that we should not be doing trade deals with countries committing human
rights abuses “well below the level of genocide”—yet by rejecting the genocide
amendment to the Trade Bill, the Government have done everything they can to
protect the UK’s right to do trade deals with potentially genocidal states.
Global Britain, it seems, is just empty rhetoric, with no substance. Because
the words “never again” are utterly meaningless if we fail to act, history will
remember us, and we have a moral duty to step in and stop these heinous crimes.
Afzal Khan said, “Powerful interventions from faith
communities, including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, have passionately
called on the Government to support the genocide amendment, and the Jewish
community has even drawn a parallel between the horrors in Xinjiang and the
holocaust. Despite that, the Government continue to drag their feet on holding
China to account. Instead, they put trade above human rights. They must
continue to press the Chinese Government to close detention camps, cease
indiscriminate surveillance and restrictions on religion and culture, and allow
independent experts and UN officials proper access to Xinjiang.
Afzal Khan said, “After the genocides in Rwanda, Srebrenica
and Darfur, we said, “Never again.” I hope that we can all agree that we cannot add
Xinjiang to that list. I urge the Government not to turn a blind eye to
millions of innocent lives because of economic interest.”
Tim Loughton
(East Worthing and
Shoreham) (Con) [V]
Conservative Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, said, “Another
day, another debate on the industrial scale of human rights abuses by the
Chinese regime. Here we are again, and I am delighted that we are; I
congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani), who has so
championed the cause, and wholeheartedly endorse everything she said. Together
with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain
Duncan Smith) and the rest of the magnificent seven parliamentarians, she and I
wear our sanctioning with a badge of honour.
He continued, “I hope that the message has now got through
that the productivity of the seven of us has increased sharply since that inept
act by the Chinese regime of putting us on the arbitrary and ridiculous
sanctions list. Let me tell the Chinese Government: they ain’t seen nothing
yet, because this will go on every day of every week that we can possibly raise
it in this place and on the platforms afforded to us as parliamentarians. They
have really fired us up to make sure that that is a promise we will deliver.
Tim Loughton wholeheartedly supported the motion. Although
Tibet is not within its strict scope, everything that has been said so far
applies to Tibet and its people, who have been oppressed with similar tactics
for the last 62 years, since the occupation of that peace-loving people in the
Tibetan region of China back in 1959.
He mentioned, “I absolutely take up the point that my right
hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green made about the
environment. China is guilty of abusing not just its own people, but the
planet, more than any other nation on this earth. Neither is acceptable; one is
not a trade-off against the other, if that is the attitude that it wants to
take when it comes to COP26. Both need to be called out, and on both it needs
to mend its ways—they go hand in hand.
Tim Loughton said, “It is a shocking reality that genocides
have never properly been called out and thwarted at the time that they
happen—genocides against the Jews, genocides against the Muslims in Srebrenica,
genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia and Darfur, and the many other genocides that go
unnamed and are not properly detected, as the hon. Member for Bolton South East
(Yasmin Qureshi) mentioned. I include in that list the Armenian genocide of
1915 and 1916, when 1 million to 1.5 million men, women and children died at
the hands of the Ottomans. On Saturday, in Yerevan and around the world,
tributes will be paid and flowers laid; I will do so on behalf of the all-party
parliamentary group on Armenia at the Cenotaph tomorrow in commemoration of
that terrible genocide, which this country needs to recognise, more than 100
years on.”
Tim Loughton said, “We talk about debating the subject.
Under article I of the UN convention on the prevention and punishment of the
crime of genocide, the United Kingdom is obliged, along with all other UN
members, “to prevent and to punish” genocide—not just to talk about it,
although it is good that we are doing that, but actually to do something about
it.”
He said, “We have heard all the clear evidence on what is
going on in Xinjiang province; I will not repeat what my hon. Friend the Member
for Wealden said. We know that China formally recognised the Uyghurs as an
ethnic minority among its exhaustive list of the no fewer than 56 ethnic groups
that comprise its population, along with the Tibetan people. Under China’s own
constitution, those minorities and their cultures and identities should be
protected, but they are being obliterated. China is trying to assimilate them
within its main population, so whatever we may think in terms of international
law, it is falling foul of its own constitution. As my hon. Friend the Member
for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) said, the Chinese regime, in doing what it
has done to suppress free speech, has committed an act against this Parliament
and the privileges that we have in this Parliament. It is a naked act of
aggression against free speech.”
Tim also mentioned, “It is clear that what is happening is
genocide. My hon. Friend the Member for Wealden put it starkly: if a
state-orchestrated and race-targeted birth rate plunge of two thirds in two
years is not genocide, what is? If mass internment, slave labour, systematic
rape, torture and live organ harvesting, mass sterilisation, womb removal,
forced abortion, secretly located orphan camps, brainwashing camps and the
psychological trauma of these combined atrocities do not amount to genocide,
under any of the definitions, what does? There is a saying, “If it looks like a
duck, sounds like a duck and walks like a duck, it is a duck.” This sounds
like, looks like and is genocide, and it needs to be called out loud and clear
for what it is.
Tim Loughton urged
the Minister again, who has been very supportive. “We are very grateful for the
very supportive words of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the
Minister, who I am glad to see here again today, and of the Speaker and the
Lord Speaker in support of the magnificent seven. But why, oh why, are we not
going further in the sanctions against people who are clearly guilty of waging
genocide on other Chinese citizens? Chen Quanguo absolutely needs to be on that
list; he has been committing genocide against the Uyghurs since 2016, having
learnt and plied his trade in Tibet against the Tibetans before that,” he said.
He said, "We need to do more to support those businesses that are being
thrown out of Xinjiang and that are in some cases taking a stand. We need to
have a proper audit of our universities and schools. I hear that the Prebendal
School in Chichester, in my own diocese, is now under threat of being taken
over by the Chinese, and this is on top of no fewer than 17 senior schools
around the UK that are now under the control of senior Chinese figures in the
Chinese communist party. This is happening in our country, on our watch. We
need to flush it out; we need to put the spotlight on it.
He continued, "The contacts the Chinese have within our military research
and their activities within our infrastructure projects—we have to have a full
and thorough audit of the tentacles of the Chinese regime in UK society up and
down this country. There are still artificial intelligence firms with links to
persecution of Uyghurs funding research at British universities. They are
funding places at PhD and post-doctoral research positions at Surrey
University, for example, despite having been placed on a US blacklist in 2019.
I pay tribute to the University of Manchester, which cancelled an agreement
with the Chinese electronic company CETC after warnings that it supplied the tech platforms and apps used by Beijing’s
security forces in the mass surveillance of the Uyghurs.
He said, “We need to do more to make sure we are not aiding
and abetting these parts of the Chinese regime. Last month, the Foreign Office
admitted that the Uyghurs were being harassed and abused in the UK itself, so
it is not just happening within China. As the Foreign Secretary said, this is
being done to intimidate them into silence, and they are being urged to report
on other Uyghurs to the police.”
Tim Loughton also mentioned, “Rahima Mahmut, the UK
director for the World Uyghur Congress, who has bravely stood up and is one of
the mouthpieces for the Uyghur population here, was in Parliament Square
earlier. In an article in The Telegraph, she gave some chilling examples of Uyghur exiles in this
country being intimidated by the long tentacles of the Chinese regime while in
the supposed safety of this country. Those exiles are ominously reminded that
they have relatives back in China. A Uyghur woman received texts every day from
the Chinese police urging her to spy on other Uyghurs in the UK and saying,
“Remember, your mother and your sisters are with us.””
This regime does not stop at its own borders and we need to
stand shoulder to shoulder and offer whatever support we can to protect those
Uyghur refugees, Tibetan refugees and other victims of oppression by China who
find themselves in this country. They deserve our safety and our succour, and
we need to give them more to protect them from the dangers that they are going
through.
Tim Loughton urged
the Minister: “we should be encouraging our diplomats to speak out. Last week,
I cited the example of the new British ambassador in Beijing who had been
hauled over the coals for just mentioning the free press to the Chinese
Government. John Sudworth, the BBC correspondent in Beijing, has had to flee
from Beijing, after reporting on human rights abuses, because of fears for his
own safety and the safety of his family. We must encourage these people to
continue to speak out.”
