Uyghur Tribunal Judgment — House of Commons, 2022-01-20
Topic: International Affairs
Christopher Murray Alexander Law (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am glad that the hon. Member has addressed that point. I did not directly mean those who had been sanctioned, but others beyond that who would like to say and do more. I fully appreciate that there are no sanctioned Members here who fear the Communist party state and its behaviour towards its inhabitants I was talking about reciprocal access to Tibet. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who is no longer in his seat, and who I work with as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Tibet, has persevered with the Tibet and Xinjiang (Reciprocal Access) Bill. I once again urge the UK Government to give the Bill their full support and to enact its provisions immediately. I look forward to hearing a response on that this afternoon Indeed, many have commented that the illegal invasion and occupation of Tibet was the testing ground for the Chinese Communist party, and that the lessons learned from the oppression of Tibetans have been applied to Xinjiang, yet none of us across the decade since then has done enough to stand up for the people of Tibet, and this is the consequence of silence. It would be worthwhile, therefore, if the UK Government reversed the regrettable decision taken by the then Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, in 2008 to disregard the previous recognised autonomy of Tibet and accept Chinese authority over the region In 2011, Chen Quanguo was appointed the party secretary in the Tibetan autonomous region after the Chinese Communist party vowed never to let the protests that happened there in 2008 occur again. He was the key individual behind blanket surveillance, a heavy police presence, arrests and disappearances, and re-education camps in Tibet. From 2016, he has employed the same security measures in his repression of the Uyghurs, only this time on a far expanded scale. He was able to move seamlessly from repressing one group of people to another, because as far as the Chinese Communist party is concerned, he got results and he got away with it in the international community Chen is named in the Xinjiang papers released at the Uyghur Tribunal, and the UK Government must step up sanctions against him and his colleagues involved in perpetrating these gross human rights abuses. So I would like to hear from the Minister what further names have been added to the Magnitsky sanctions. The USA has sanctioned him, and it is again ahead of the UK, having just passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act banning all imports from Xinjiang unless a company can prove that they were not made with forced labour The UK could be doing exactly the same, but instead is choosing to sit on its hands, and the Government have in fact rejected the BEIS Committee’s recommendations to help tackle slave labour in Xinjiang. The Minister needs to explain why, and I urge the Government that this needs to change. Given that one in five garments globally are made from the cotton of Xinjiang—which means that just about every one of us in this Chamber will be wearing such a garment—and that other key products such as solar panels, which have been mentioned, are produced there, the UK needs to toughen up and enforce its own legislation. Furthermore, the UK should be pressing for the International Labour Organisation to conduct a full investigation on the Xinjiang region, to verify the extent of forced labour there as a matter of urgency The recent integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy called for more trade with China, but that potential trade liberalisation cannot come at the cost of forced labour in Xinjiang and weak words and inaction from the UK Government on these grave human rights abuses. As we have heard, the current Foreign Secretary, in her previous position as International Trade Secretary, facilitated a doubling of trade with China. The world cannot be picked off nation by nation, each turning a blind eye to genocide for the sake of trade deals I echo the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), who is no longer in his place, in saying that we need to work with democracies across the world because democracy is fragile, and that is fundamentally what is being undermined as we do nothing here. Instead of focusing on trade, and whipping Members to vote against anti-genocide amendments to the Trade Bill, atrocity prevention should be the priority. It is deeply regrettable that the UK Government, like others, failed to recognise and prevent the atrocities in Xinjiang before they reached the levels that we are currently witnessing Finally, the UK Government cannot appease China, given these crimes against humanity. It is imperative that the UK Government go beyond words of condemnation and use every single possible avenue to end the persecution and to pursue the punishment of those who have instigated and participated in it. The Chinese Government must be held to account for their abhorrent crimes, and held to account now. Given the overwhelming evidence, and given that every single person in this Chamber is saying, time and again, "Please act, and please act now," I expect nothing less than that from the UK Government Minister this afternoon, to show that we are not cowardly; and I also expect to hear her accept that to do nothing would be an utterly shameful abandonment of our legal and moral duty, as well as our own humanity.