Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): I move That the text of the motion be amended to read according to the Speaker's Order Paper No. 10: That this House believe that Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are suffering crimes against humanity and genocide and call on the Government to act to fulfil its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and all relevant instruments of international law to bring it to an end."SPEAKER: The question is that the amendment be agreed to. Has the member finished her speech?GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: Sir no; that was just the point of order.SPEAKER: The member's got another few minutes—so nine minutes to go. If she stops I'll put it.GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: The Green Party unequivocally condemns the grave atrocities being suffered by the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang province and other religious linguistic and cultural minorities at the hands of the Chinese Government. I rise today as an indigenous Kurdish woman who has suffered what I would characterise in my own region as amounting to at least crimes against humanity to ethnic cleansing and perhaps to genocide. I rise also I note as we all do each day in this House on land that was never ceded by the indigenous people of this land where we know that similar atrocity crimes have been committed and suffered. I want to thank the member who has brought this motion to the House. I do regret that the final motion that has been debated thus far was to put it mildly watered down and that the House has shied away from talking about atrocity crimes being committed by the Government of China but rather what we're now calling "severe human rights breaches". It is important the words that we use in condemnation of what is happening at the scale that it's happening with the systemicity that is happening in Xinjiang province in China and at the hands of any Government that treats its minorities with persecution and with what we know is what amounts to torture what amounts to forcible sterilisation with children being removed and what we know the numbers are which is approaching well over a million. That's all we know coming out of a closed region based on UN conservative estimates. We also here in Aotearoa New Zealand sit in a House of Representatives where just a year and a half ago just two years ago our Muslim minority suffered what our nation now recalls as the latest of grave hate crimes. Again we know that ethnic violence was not new at that moment on March 15 2019. We know that our indigenous people have suffered it for a long time. So we stand here in solidarity with the Uyghur minority knowing a little of their pain.The crime of genocide—and I have sat in courtrooms both in defence and in prosecution of that crime—amounts to any act with the intention of destroying that population based on its ethnicity nationality religion or race in whole or in part in any region. It isn't the crime of crimes. All atrocity crimes are equal before the law in international courts. The crime of crimes in Nuremberg was actually recognised as the crime of aggression. We don't often condemn the crime of aggression in our Western Parliaments or by Governments and I do wonder why we sometimes in fact send our troops to be complicit and to aid and abet in that crime when it happens at least in my region of the world. So today I hope that this marks a shift that New Zealand's Parliament is going to stand in solidarity with victims of atrocity crimes whether they are unlawful wars whether they are war crimes whether it's genocide or crimes against humanity whether they are committed by Governments who we see as our traditional allies our trading partners and indeed especially if they're happening in our Asia-Pacific neighbourhood as these crimes are today. But what matters is not only our words of condemnation. It's not whether or not we recognise this as a genocide and not another atrocity crime. What matters is our actions. I was deeply disappointed to hear leadership from both major political parties refer to trade as a consideration for them when they were discussing whether or not they would allow a motion using the word "genocide" when they were talking about the mass torture. Extrajudicial detention is sterilisation and slavery of some 1 million people. That was stunningly callous. It was absolutely morally indefensible and it is a breach of New Zealand's legal obligations our absolute responsibility to support an international rules - based order where we uphold not only human rights but where we condemn help to prosecute punish and prevent atrocity crimes because we know that mass crimes like this are an absolute threat to international peace and security to all of our dignity all of our human rights. I do hope that this is a motion that will trigger action. What the Green Party has been condemning is happening in Xinjiang province requires us to stop trade of slave labour goods coming out of that region. Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade under questioning and in the select committee said that they couldn't even identify if it was happening. Last week we found out that the Greater Wellington Regional Council had inadvertently bought buses that were very likely produced by Uyghur slave labour after asking the ministry for go-ahead. We know that that same ministry gave up to 260 permits for trade of military equipment including under a UN blacklist which we breached in selling military goods to the Saudi military when they were blacklisted for killing Yemeni children. When I asked ministry officials about that in select committee they laughed. We know that our Government is not doing enough to prevent atrocity crimes and uphold our international obligations. We know that the ACT Party itself voted down the last time legislation came through this House to prevent slave labour goods from being sold in New Zealand. We want action not just words. We owe the victims action and we owe victims across the globe that same condemnation and action. We owe it to the Palestinian children being removed from their homes and imprisoned. We owe it to West Papuans being extrajudicially imprisoned in our Asia-Pacific neighbourhood. We owe it to Western Saharans who are right now under the process of UN's decolonisation framework. New Zealand remains the only nation trading in their minerals stolen from their land. We owe an even hand to victims of atrocity crimes across the world and this motion will hopefully be a beginning of that. We owe it to the people of Aotearoa New Zealand to be on the right side of history. Thank you sir."