Human Rights: Xinjiang — House of Commons, 2021-04-22
Topic: Mixed Topics
Nigel Adams (Conservative, Centre-right): I am incredibly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) for securing this debate, and I pay tribute to her, and to all hon. and right hon. colleagues who were the recipients of those ill thought-out and ludicrous sanctions announced by China recently, for their continued work on this important issue I of course acknowledge the strength of feeling across the House on this critically important issue. We have heard some powerful speeches from all parts of the House today. Parliaments and individual parliamentarians rightly play a pivotal role in drawing global attention to human rights violations, wherever they occur. I am very grateful for all the contributions and I will try to answer the points raised within the context of my speech. I am conscious that I need to leave my hon. Friend some time to wind up the debate As we have heard from across the Floor, the situation faced by Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang is truly harrowing. We have repeatedly emphasised our grave concern at the serious and widespread human rights violations occurring in the region. There are credible reports of the extrajudicial detention of over 1 million Uyghur people and other minorities in political re-education camps since 2017, extensive and invasive surveillance targeting minorities, forced separation of children from their parents, forced sterilisation of women, systematic restriction on Uyghur culture, education and the practice of Islam, and the widespread use of forced labour The evidence of the scale and severity of the violations in Xinjiang is extensive. That includes, as the whole House knows, satellite imagery, the testimony of survivors, credible open-source reporting by journalists and academic researchers, and visits by British diplomats to the region that have corroborated reports about the targeting of specific ethnic groups. United Nations special rapporteurs and other international experts have also expressed their very serious concerns Meanwhile, leaked and publicly available documents from the Chinese Government themselves verify many of the reports that we have seen. Those documents show guidance on how to run internment camps, and lists showing how and why people have been detained. They contain extensive references to coercive social measures and show statistical data on birth control and on security spending and recruitment in Xinjiang. In the face of that evidence, the United Kingdom has acted decisively. In March, the Government took the significant step of sanctioning four senior individuals responsible for the violations that have taken place, and which persist, against the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. We also designated the organisation responsible for enforcing the repressive security policies across many areas of Xinjiang The sanctions involve travel bans and asset freezes against the individuals and an asset freeze against the entity that we are designating. These individuals are barred from entering the UK and any assets that they hold in the UK are frozen. By acting alongside our partners, the United States, Canada and the European Union, on an agreed set of designations, we have sent a clear and powerful message to the Chinese Government that the international community will not turn a blind eye to serious and systematic violations of basic human rights. These countries amount to a third of global GDP On 12 January, we announced robust domestic measures to help to ensure that UK businesses and the public sector avoid complicity in human rights violations in Xinjiang through their supply chains, including a review of export controls as they apply to Xinjiang, the introduction of financial penalties for organisations that fail to comply with their transparency obligations under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and robust and detailed guidance for UK businesses to target those who profit from forced labour and those who would support it financially, whether deliberately or otherwise We have also acted internationally to hold China to account for its policies in Xinjiang. In February, in the first personal address to the UN Human Rights Council by a UK Foreign Secretary in more than a decade, my right hon. Friend underlined his call for China to allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, or another independent expert, "urgent and unfettered access to Xinjiang." That point was made powerfully by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) and was reinforced by the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) and the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) Working with our partners, we have built an international caucus of countries calling China out for its gross human rights violations and increased the diplomatic pressure for Beijing to change course. On 6 October 2020, alongside Germany, we brought together 39 countries to express grave concern at the situation in Xinjiang in a joint statement at the UN General Assembly Third Committee. That was an increase on the 23 countries that supported the UK-led joint statement a year earlier We continue to raise the human rights violations in Xinjiang directly with the Chinese authorities. I had direct conversations recently when I summoned the chargé to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has raised his serious concerns on a number of occasions with his counterpart, Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi The motion before the House is that the situation in Xinjiang amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity. The UK of course treats all allegations of genocide and crimes against humanity with the gravity they demand. As a nation, we have a strong history of protecting global human rights, but as the House is no doubt aware, the UK’s long-standing position, like many countries around the world, is that determining whether a situation amounts to genocide or crimes against humanity is a matter for competent national and international courts, after consideration of all the available evidence.