Uyghur Tribunal Judgment — House of Commons, 2022-01-20
Topic: International Affairs
Nusrat Munir Ul-Ghani (Conservative, Centre-right): I beg to move, That this House notes that the December 2021 Uyghur Tribunal’s judgment in London found beyond reasonable doubt that the People’s Republic of China was responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and torture in the Uyghur region; and calls on the Government to urgently assess whether it considers there to be a serious risk of genocide in the Uyghur region and to present its findings to the House within two months of this motion being passed, use all means reasonably available to ensure the cessation of ongoing genocide, including conducting due diligence to ensure it is not assisting, aiding, abetting or otherwise allowing the continuation of genocide and fulfil its other obligations under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, accept the recommendations of the Fifth Report of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, Uyghur forced labour in Xinjiang and UK value chains, Session 2019-21, HC 1272, including black-listing UK firms selling slave-made products in the UK and putting in place import controls to protect UK consumers, and place sanctions on the perpetrators of this genocide, including Chen Quanguo I put on record my thanks to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and the World Uyghur Congress, and to Rahima Mahmut and Dolkun Isa in particular. I also thank Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who chaired the Uyghur Tribunal. He worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia between 1998 and 2006 and led the prosecution in the trial of Slobodan Milošević, the former President of Serbia, for genocide. I cannot stress enough that there is no person more qualified than Sir Geoffrey to assess the facts and determine whether there has been genocide, the crime of all crimes There is a lot of speculation in this place about people abdicating their legal and moral duties, and that is what this debate is about. The Government have a legal and moral duty to respond to the Uyghur Tribunal’s verdict and the evidence that was put before it. They must stop shirking that duty by using expensive Government lawyers to weasel their way out of acting—a course of action that is truly reprehensible As we know, the Uyghur Tribunal verdict last month, which was based on the facts, was crystal clear: genocide is taking place in the Xinjiang region of north-west China. What more do the Government need to see and hear? Surely the Minister cannot argue with the evidence presented to the tribunal, or its conclusion that human rights abuses, torture and genocide are taking place—a conclusion that it made while it was sanctioned by the Chinese Communist party. There is no plausible reason for the Government to ignore the conclusions of the tribunal. To do so is to quibble on a point of dubious legality, to ignore evidence and to ignore the moral and legal duty to act. When will the Government do the right thing, and—this is a question to which we desperately seek an answer—where is the organising force of this Government I am not interested in hearing the Minister discuss whether or not the Uyghur Tribunal is a competent court. That is irrelevant to this debate. I am focusing on the International Court of Justice’s Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro 2007 ruling, which completely blows that argument out the water. Let me remind the Minister of the legal situation that the Government are in. The ICJ ruled that "a State’s obligation to prevent, and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed." That is the crux of the issue, and of this debate. Those are the rules that the Government are operating under—unless the Minister intends to suggest today at the Dispatch Box that we are now making up our own rules on the hoof This House, too, has examined some of the most horrific evidence put to the Uyghur Tribunal. With one voice, Parliament agreed that genocide was taking place in Xinjiang against the Uyghur people and other minorities. That was a significant development. We joined our allies in America in taking that view, and were soon followed by Parliaments in countries across the world, including the Netherlands, Lithuania, Canada and the Czech Republic Today’s debate is about three things. First, now that the evidence has been presented to the Uyghur Tribunal, the Government must assess whether, under their ICJ obligations, they consider there to be a serious risk of genocide. Today’s motion will force the Government to present that analysis to the House within two months Secondly, if the Government will not or cannot do anything about the genocide, the mass rapes, the torture and the abuses taking place in Xinjiang, they should at least protect the British people. The British public—including my constituents and, no doubt, the Minister’s constituents—do not want to be assisting, aiding or abetting the Uyghur genocide. Only the Government can protect the British consumer by introducing import controls, blacklisting British firms profiting from slave labour, and toughening up the current toothless anti-slavery rules Finally, the Government should act in line with our closest international allies and use Magnitsky sanctions against Chen Quanguo, the architect of the misery in Xinjiang.