That this House believes that the 2022 Winter Olympic games should not be hosted in a country whose Government is credibly accused of mass atrocity crimes; and calls on the UK Government to decline invitations for its representatives to attend the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games unless the Government of the People’s Republic of China ends the atrocities taking place in the Xinjiang region and lifts the sanctions imposed on UK Parliamentarians, citizens and entities.
I presume the time limit does not apply to me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I must first declare an interest, as one of the sanctioned—I wear my badge of honour today—although any financial interest that I would have to declare would no doubt have been frozen by the Chinese Government. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us time for this very important subject.
As a spotty school student back in 1980, I proposed a motion at a local school debating competition that the UK Government should not boycott the Moscow summer Olympics, following the invasion of Afghanistan over the previous Christmas, and that politics should be kept out of sport. As it turned out, Mrs Thatcher, the Prime Minister at the time, recommended a boycott, but it was left up to the individual sporting bodies whether they sent athletes from their sports to the games. Those who competed did so under the Olympic flag, and the few gold medals that we won were collected to the strains of the choral cantata that is the Olympic anthem. My overriding memory of those Olympic games was the image of Daley Thompson emotionally collecting his decathlon gold medal and belting out “God Save the Queen” to the tune of the rather dreary Olympic hymn. Sixty-five countries carried out a full boycott of the 1980 Olympics, including such strange bedfellows as the US and Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia, and China. China condemned the Russians, sent no athletes and subsequently did not appear on the medal table, so China really does not have a leg to stand on when it finds itself on the end of the same treatment that it meted out to its neighbour back in 1980.
I am delighted to be in the Chamber listening to this extremely important speech from my hon. Friend. Does he recall that we had our own contribution to the silencing of debate, sadly, at the time of the Olympics in London? Some of the so-called guards of the Olympic flame turned out to be operatives from the Ministry of State Security, and dealt with citizens and individuals in this country rather more brutally than we would ever tolerate of our own police.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Furthermore, I remember mentioning in this House the fate of Tibetans who had been protesting in the Mall and were arrested and stuck behind crowds and, in some cases, had their homes raided by the police, and were arrested before they could go and protest. That is not the way we do things in this country, yet for some reason we kowtowed to the Chinese authorities at that stage. That must never be repeated, and we must not resile from calling out those sort of tactics, which the Chinese will use in their own country and wherever they can gain influence.
I was reflecting on my hon. Friend’s earlier comments about the Olympics in Beijing. We were told in 2008, as I recall, that the awarding of the Olympics would be a key moment in the movement to get China to acknowledge and uphold human rights to a greater degree. That was in 2008. Does he think that it has made much progress?
That is exactly the point that I have been labouring to make. It was all a sham, and we all know how human rights in China have gone from bad to worse.
Back ahead of 2008, the Chinese authorities also had to clean up the environment around Beijing, as it looked at one stage as if everyone would have to compete in masks. Thirteen years on, China remains the world’s largest polluter, responsible for some 26% of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions. It has burnt more coal over the past 11 years than the rest of the world put together and now imperils the world’s third pole, the Tibetan plateau glaciers that service the water needs of billions of people. Of course, the energy needed to produce artificial snow in Beijing for the winter sports, as will be needed, will not exactly win any environmental awards.
Like it or not, China will make this global sporting event a global political spectacle. It is incredible, frankly, that the winter games were awarded to China in the first place, a sign of the much-too-cosy relationship between the Chinese Government, the IOC and its president, Thomas Bach, who during President Xi’s visit to the IOC headquarters in Lausanne back in 2017 claimed that he wanted to give the Chinese President a set of medals because
“he is the true Olympic champion for the youth”.
Yuck.
On virtually every level, the awarding of the games to China should never have happened. It flies in the face of the Olympic principles as encoded in the Olympics by the IOC, which states that
“Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example, social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles... The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity…sports organisations within the Olympic Movement shall apply political neutrality. They have the rights and obligations of autonomy, which include freely establishing and controlling the rules of sport, determining the structure and governance of their organisations, enjoying the right of elections free from any outside influence.”
I apologise for missing the first few seconds of what is a very powerful speech. I agree with every word the hon. Gentleman has said. He is completely right that the Chinese Government intend to use these winter Olympics as a propaganda exercise. Does he agree that it should be possible to turn this around if we—I just put this forward as an example—start referring to these winter Olympics as something like the “Genocide Games”?
If they are going to go ahead, that would be a very effective label to put on them to really force the point. The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point.
To go back the LGBT point I was making, remember that homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder in China until 2001 and earlier this year a Chinese court upheld a university’s description of homosexuality as a psychological disorder. How does that square with the principles I quoted in the Olympic charter?
There are also fears that Beijing merchandise will be made with Uyghur forced labour. I hope that the British sponsors of the games will have no truck with that if they continue to offer sponsorship and that some pressure may be applied there.
In bringing this motion before the House today, we are not alone. Through the good services of IPAC—the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China—and other like-minded organisations, motions are being put before the US House of Representatives, Parliaments in Germany, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Lithuania and others. On 8 June, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on member states and the Commission to decline invitations to the games in the absence of human rights improvement. For once, the EU did the right thing and voted for that unanimously. US Secretary of State Blinken has already mooted a diplomatic boycott, which has incurred the wrath of China, while Congressman Tom Malinowski of the House Foreign Affairs Committee has said:
“The International Olympic Committee should not be validating the Chinese government’s international standing while that government is committing genocide and crimes against humanity. This coordinated effort by legislators in multiple democratic countries sends a message the IOC cannot ignore: if it can discuss postponing the Tokyo Games over public health concerns, it can certainly move the China games over the mass incarceration of millions in concentration camps.”
I thank the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for securing this debate and for his excellent, powerful speech.
The repression of Uyghur Muslims by the Chinese Government has a long and dark history, but in the past few years the Chinese Government have ramped up their persecution of Uyghurs. It is estimated that more than 1 million people are being held in internment camps in Xinjiang, and the Chinese Government are showing no sign of pausing their haunting campaign. Yet despite condemnation from all sides of the House, including the Government, there is still a gaping chasm between rhetoric and action. We cannot on the one hand recognise genocide and on the other send dignitaries and diplomats to the Beijing Olympics. We must be robust in our condemnation and send a message to the Uyghur Muslims that we are on their side.
Calls for a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics are gaining momentum internationally. It is high time that the UK demonstrates leadership on the issue and follows in the footsteps of the EU and America to send a strong message to the international community that the UK condemns the shocking human rights abuses taking place in Xinjiang and in Hong Kong. We cannot let China divert attention away from international criticism of its human rights abuses and oppressive policies.
A diplomatic boycott is a basic ask. Frankly, we should not even be having a debate on this. Out of sheer principle, the UK Government must support a boycott and press China to allow the UN unfettered access to conduct an independent investigation.
There are many more much-needed practical steps that the Government could take. Will the Minister outline what steps the Government are taking in response to those parliamentarians who have been sanctioned by the Chinese Government? Will he provide an update on further Magnitsky sanctions for those committing human rights abuses in Xinjiang? The Government should also be investigating claims that UK universities could be inadvertently supporting the development of facial recognition and surveillance technologies that are then used by the Chinese Government in the oppression of Uyghur people. What representations has the Minister made to UK universities on that matter?
It is a great privilege to speak in this debate. It echoes some of the comments that the Foreign Affairs Committee, which I am privileged to chair—one fellow member of the Committee, the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), is here with us today—was able to put into the report that we published only a few days ago, “Never Again: The UK’s Responsibility to Act on Atrocities in Xinjiang and Beyond”.
In that report, we looked at the Olympics, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, because of course they ask some very specific questions of us. It is not just that they are a global event and therefore an opportunity for PR, for awareness, for broadcast, for propaganda even. The Olympics are much more than that. They were, of course, reinvented in the 19th century, but their origins go back to the idea of competition as an avoidance of war. Their origins go, indeed, to the origins of our own civilisations, emerging as they did from the great Greek city states.
The Olympics set, in a constructive and organised fashion, a set of rules—a set of structures—that allowed people to compete equally and fairly among one other. That is a huge achievement. It is a quite remarkable achievement when we think how early it happened. It took a long time before we saw that same peaceful competition in trade, ideas, innovation and technology in our world. In fact, that really only emerged after the last war—in the last 80 years—and it has only really come to fruition since the fall of the cold war and the end of the Soviet occupation of so much of the world. It is quite a remarkable achievement that in 30 years we have been competing on the basis of rules, not force.
So this event really does matter, because this event reinforces that point that the rules matter, fairness matters, equal opportunity matters, access matters, voice matters—and the truth matters. Sadly, my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham has already cited so many areas where the truth points in a direction that Beijing wishes it did not.
I, too, want to congratulate the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and thank him for securing this debate. He knows how much I support him in his very active campaigning in calling out the human rights abuses of the Chinese Communist party against millions of its own people, and it is such a very important debate that we are having today. I do not want to repeat everything that has already been said, and indeed everything that has been said so far in this Chamber I fully support.
We have already heard in today’s debate about the significant and substantial evidence of the terrible treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, with arbitrary detention, mass incarceration, forced political indoctrination, re-education and Orwellian levels of surveillance. Most horrifying of all are the accounts of sexual abuse, torture and forcible sterilisation. It is a pervasive assault on human rights. It must be challenged; we cannot stay silent.
The UK has to do all it can, working with our international partners including the EU. I listened carefully to the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), about the limitations on intervening as a foreign state—being strong without going as far as threatening force—but we do have an opportunity. It starts with calling out what we see as what it is: genocide. There is clear evidence that the treatment of the Uyghur Muslims meets the legal definition of the crime of genocide, as set out under article 2 of the genocide convention and article 6 of the Rome statute. Parliament has recognised that, and now the Government and we in this Chamber must follow suit.
We must continue our calls for investigation by the UN, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, but we cannot afford to wait for that to happen. It is vital that we take other meaningful steps to stop these atrocities. We should work in lockstep with our European allies on sanctions and co-operate with them to expand the reach and scope of our Magnitsky sanctions regime.
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate; I thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for securing it. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I had a discussion last year with the UK Olympic committee. I had been making a bit of a fuss about why we were holding the Olympics, so they asked to come and see me. They asked what my position was. I said, “Look, as far as I am concerned, it is up to individual athletes what they choose to do. I would like them to understand where they are going and what they will be involved in. I expect the Government to take a position, and I expect they will take the view that attending, giving the games diplomatic credibility and having UK officials, Ministers and so on at the games is no longer feasible given the nature of the Chinese Communist party regime.” That was before a lot of the stuff that we now know came out. The committee’s reaction was, “We could live with that. We can understand that. That’s fair. We won’t complain about that. We understand why you would do that and leave it to individual athletes.”
My view is reinforced by what we know now. Since that conversation, Adrian Zenz laid bare the evidence of the abuses through the documentation he produced showing that the Uyghur atrocity is really a genocide. We eventually managed to publish that through the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and other institutions. We also know much more about the forced labour camps in Tibet, where we think there are 1.5 million or even more than 2 million people. My hon. Friend deserves due credit for raising that long after anyone else cared again to raise it. The list goes on. The Chinese Government are aggressive abroad and aggressive at home. They have killed Indian soldiers as they seek to dispute the border with India, they have taken over the South China sea even though the UN has said they have no historical right over the area, and they have threatened and continue to threaten Taiwan.
I am delighted to support my right hon. Friend in his powerful speech. Does he remember the words of the Chinese ambassador to Stockholm, who said only a few months ago:
“We treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we have shotguns”?
Has he ever heard another diplomat use such language?
No, I really have not. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that. The funny thing about the Chinese Government is that President Xi says exactly what he is going to do and, intriguingly, he does it. Sadly, Governments such as my own to some degree and those around the western world think he does not really mean it, and they hope that, because he did not mean it, there will be a different outcome. They make stupid excuses such as to say, “Do you know what? If we give them these games, they will uphold human rights.” That is what they did in 2018, and I do not recall much of that. Then they say, “Don’t worry. If we trade more with China in a golden decade, they will liberalise their politics and head towards democracy.” That is what was done in a Government of which I as a member.
I tell hon. Members who is naive in all of this: it is all of us. It is the western democracies who set policy for what they wish would happen. They do not remember the history of the 1930s. We have forgotten what happened when we appeased another ghastly dictatorship: 60 million people died as a result of our failure, and we are bound on the same course today.
This debate today about boycotting the Olympics is not just a token; we know that China is sensitive when it gets global criticism, when people shine a torch on what goes on there. We know that it reacts. Why do we know that? Because it sanctions people such as myself and many of my colleagues in this Chamber and in the European Parliament.
I applaud the Members of the European Parliament and the members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China who have been sanctioned, because they have stopped the European Union having a trade arrangement. What have we done? Our Government now talk about doing more trade arrangements, while we sit here as sanctioned individuals. I want the Government to act. It is simply not good enough for us, on the one hand, to say that we are horrified about what China does, and then, on the other, to make plans to seek more trade relationships with it and to say that we do not want to interfere with the Olympics.
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My view on sporting boycotts and keeping politics out of sport has not changed, which is why this motion does not call for a full sporting boycott, which victimises most the elite athletes who dedicate so much to compete every four years, however niche the UK’s medal prospects might be at the winter Olympics compared with the summer version. But the simple reality is that in this day and age sport is inextricably linked with, and often tainted by, politics whether we like it or not, and that taint sometimes can be no greater than when the event is hosted under the Olympic banner.
Most countries will bid for the honour of hosting the Olympics so that they can showcase their nation to the world as an impressive player on the world stage—a land of progress and plenty, where everything is just rosy and all the criticisms that we hear about them are baseless propaganda. I am sure we were guilty of some of that when London hosted the 2012 Olympics, especially in the visually and financially extravagant opening and closing ceremonies, which reminded the world why the United Kingdom is the top nation. The difference was that our people were free to criticise that extravaganza if they disapproved. Our press was free to caricature or lampoon it, as some did, especially Paul McCartney’s singing, and we in this place were free to tackle Ministers about whether it was money well spent and whether we actually wanted it.
In the same way, hon. and right hon. Members in this House are free to speak out against abuses at home or abroad, human rights or otherwise, as freely happened, including with the recent reports by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee on the Uyghur situation. In the same way, the House has spoken out about the grotesque oppression, torture and murder of more than a million peace-loving Tibetans at the hands of the Chinese Communist party since the occupation of 1959. In the same way, too, we have called out the industrial-scale human rights abuses against the Uyghur people—the slave labour camps in Xinjiang, the forced sterilisation of Uyghur woman—all leading to a motion unanimously passed in this House on 22 April, thanks to the good services of my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani), which called out those inhuman acts for what they are, namely, genocide, committed by the hand of the Chinese Communist Government, who in just 200 days’ time will be welcoming the world to the temporary mirage that is a free Beijing, as the goose-stepping battalions of the People’s Liberation Army take ownership of the Olympic rings and run the Olympic flag up their flagpole.
Any dissent, any protest and any adverse publicity will be cancelled, crushed and disappeared, just as the Chinese Government tried to suppress the free speech that is the hallmark of parliamentary democracy and to bully five Members of this House, including me, and two noble Lords, by responding to our exposé of their abuses by sanctioning us in the misguided belief that we would shut up and go away. Now we are apparently to be subject to China’s new counter-foreign sanctions law, too.
Of course, the opposite was true; we have been louder than ever. The crimes of the Chinese Government have been under more scrutiny in this place and beyond, as China’s counterproductive miscalculation of what democracy counts for in the west has instead acted as a recruiting sergeant for decent people across the globe determined to call the Chinese Government out as the murderous bully they are.
We should be in no doubt about the real agenda behind China’s enthusiasm to host the Olympics for the second time. The Chinese propaganda machine is being ratcheted up for this historic event, which will make the Chinese capital the first city to host both a summer and winter Olympic games. The spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Wang Wenbin, has been boasting that
“the majority of countries and people in the world recognise the fact that China’s human rights conditions are constantly improving and China has achieved notable progress in its human rights cause”—
a claim that would embarrass even the Iraqi spokesman Comical Ali, of Gulf war notoriety.
We know what the Chinese Government will use the Winter Olympics for, as they showed quite clearly at the summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008. They proudly boasted that with 105 Heads of State and Government there, it was the largest gathering of world leaders for a sporting event in world history—until 2012, that is. The People’s Liberation Army Navy Band performed the nationalistic “Welcome March” and goose-stepped across the arena. Some 56 Chinese children, representing supposedly the 56 ethnic groups of ethnic China in their respective costumes, danced across the arena to the strains of “Ode to the Motherland”, lip-synced by a nine-year-old to the pre-recorded voice of another girl who had been told that she was not pretty enough to appear on the stage. To add insult to injury, it later turned out that all 56 of those children claiming to be representatives of China’s diversity were, in fact, all Han Chinese.
The spectacular $100 million opening ceremony lasted four hours and nine minutes as the 91,000 audience enjoyed a panoply of everything Chinese. They saw everything the Chinese Communist party wanted them and the rest of the world to see. Indeed, that was made easier by the notorious use of weather modification technology to prevent clouds and rain—just one of the more extreme examples of the Chinese Communist party manipulating the environment.
It was fêted as a spectacular and unforgettable ceremony. It was
“the spectacular to end all spectaculars and probably can never be bettered”,
in the mesmerised words of one Tony Blair, but it was all a sham. The awarding of the 2008 Olympics to Beijing was accompanied by the International Olympic Committee promising that the games would act as a catalyst for human rights reform in China. One widely acknowledged genocide in Xinjiang later; thousands of Tibetans arrested, imprisoned, displaced, tortured and killed later; the snuffing out of free speech, the free press and political freedom and the trashing of the Sino-British joint declaration and imposition of the national security law later—that went well, didn’t it?
To help win the 2008 Olympics, China promised to allow space for Chinese citizens to protest during the games. Spaces were indeed allocated, but those who applied for permission to protest were in fact arrested, making a mockery of the undertakings to the IOC, and no doubt the same will happen again next February, as China remains the world’s largest jailer of journalists.
Finally, it states:
“The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Olympic Charter shall be secured without discrimination of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
How on earth does a genocidal, industrial scale human rights abusing, free speech intolerant and planet vandalising regime square with those principles?
In 2017, Xi Jinping claimed the international Olympic movement, in its over 100 years, had played a positive role in enhancing all-round human development, deepening friendship between nations, and promoting peace, development and progress. Everything that China has done since then and is still doing makes a mockery of that claim if the Beijing Olympics are allowed to go ahead in the form that the Chinese Communist party wants, its behaviour is allowed to be normalised, and it is allowed to score the major soft power propaganda victory it craves.
That is why a motion passed by this House urging a diplomatic boycott is so important, emphasising again that we will not turn a blind eye to industrial scale human rights abuses, and hopefully impressing on the Government the need to enact such a boycott so that no Ministers, diplomats, royal family members and other VIPs dance to the tune of the Chinese Communist party. The loss of face it will suffer will show how serious the United Kingdom is.
To date, the Chinese Government have taken no notice. Just last week, the Chinese tech giant Tencent’s WeChat social media platform deleted dozens of LGBT accounts, sparking fears of a crackdown on gay content online and gay rights generally, again in defiance of Olympic principles and echoing the actions of Russia suppressing LGBT organisations ahead of the 2014 Sochi winter Olympics.
In return, when celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist regime earlier this month, President Xi cheerily threatened that any foreigners attempting to influence China
“will have their heads bashed…against the Great Wall of steel”.
President Xi can bash away all he likes, but this House must not and will not be bowed.
This House will soon be invited to vote on a motion calling for the UK Government to institute a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics. I hope that hon. and right hon. Members vote Aye and that the Government act on that strong hint. But it must mean something and it must lead to more action and consequences for China’s behaviour beyond just a 16-day sporting event in February.
The Foreign Secretary has been robust in his condemnation of industrial scale human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The sanctions against a small number of officials and the restrictions on businesses dealing in Xinjiang are welcome, but they must be just a small start to a much broader programme of tangible action co-ordinated with our allies who champion democracy and human rights. Today, I re-tabled my Tibet (Reciprocal Access) Bill and extended it to apply to Xinjiang. The US Congress unanimously passed the Bill on which it is based—why can’t we?
Earlier, we heard concerns about the proposed Chinese takeover of the UK’s largest semiconductor producer, which must surely be blocked under the powers that the Government have under the National Security and Investment Act 202.
I am coming to an end now, Madam Deputy Speaker, as I know you want me to. The latest move makes it even more imperative that we have a full, holistic audit of the throttling grip that the many tentacles of the Chinese state is taking in British boardrooms, on British research and infrastructure projects, on British university campuses and in British classrooms. When will the notorious Chen Quanguo, the architect of oppression in Tibet and genocide in Xinjiang, be added to the sanctions list, along with other Chinese Communist party officials and politicians?
Acting on the motion today is not a discretionary option. It is imperative, and we are duty bound legally. The UK is a party to the genocide convention. All state parties to the genocide convention are under an obligation to refrain from taking an active part in the crime of genocide and, additionally, to prevent the commission of genocide by others using all means reasonably available and within their power. That includes situations where one state alone would be unable to prevent genocide but where its actions in combination with the efforts of others may do so.
A diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics is a measure available to the UK that may contribute to preventing genocide from being committed in the Xinjiang region. That is precisely because the Olympics has been identified as a key pressure point on China. China is seeking to use the Olympics to portray a positive image to the world and has already threatened a robust response to the suggestion that US diplomats may decline to attend. Such comments reveal its acute sensitivity to the spotlight that a diplomatic boycott would shine on its human rights abuses, and highlight the corresponding leverage that the international community has.
We are therefore under an obligation to prevent and punish the crime of genocide, as set down in the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. This House has already determined that a very credible case exists that atrocities have been carried out by the Chinese Government against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, amounting to crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide. In passing the motion today, we will be therefore fulfilling our obligations and doing our job. I very much hope that the Minister will confirm that the Government will now take their obligations seriously and do their job by implementing the terms of the motion.
In conclusion, the point is not the UK’s withdrawing support from a sporting event. It is about condemning the ongoing crimes against humanity taking place in Xinjiang. It is about ensuring that UK supply chains are not linked to forced Uyghur labour. It is about making sure that Chinese companies complicit in the surveillance of Uyghurs in Xinjiang are not sponsoring research in British universities. It is about taking a stand—a stand that I hope, after today’s timely debate, will be taken.
That is a great shame. It is a great shame not just for the people of China, who are of course the first prisoners of the Chinese Communist party, and for the people of the region, who of course suffer from the numerous abuses and indignities that the Chinese state has been imposing upon them; it is actually a shame for the entire world. It is a shame for us in this country, despite the freedoms we enjoy and the luxuries we are blessed with, because we lose out.
We lose out on the ability to share equally and fairly with a people that has given the world so much: 5,000 years of amazing civilisation emerging from that extraordinary plateau around the Yangtze valley and from the emergence of ideas, people, culture and economics. What wealth came from those people, what ideas have the people of China given humanity, and what richness have we enjoyed from their imaginations, minds and freedoms. So we all lose when they lose. We all suffer when their ideals are stolen, we all suffer when their innovation is silenced and their culture is curtailed, and we all suffer when their voices are locked away, and that is what we are seeing today.
There are few ways in which the UK can respond directly. It would be wrong politically, militarily, economically, socially and culturally to threaten force. It would be wrong to seek to punish individuals whose crime is simply to be citizens of a dictatorial state—they are already punished enough—and that makes it very difficult to know how to respond. However, one way we can respond is by standing up and making it clear that we do not accept the legitimacy of the regime, and that we do not accept its right to so change the truth and so violate the reality of the world in which we live that it can use the ultimate evidence—the ultimate moment of propaganda—of the global success of rules, fairness and integrity, and twist, contort and divert it to its own nefarious ends.
So I think we should attend the games, but only as athletes, and at the moments when the games have a propaganda element—at the beginning or at the end—we only need a single athlete to hold a single flag to make clear the point that the team stand together against this tyranny. In seeing that single individual, it will be clear to the world that Britain’s voice is there and present at the games, but not participating in the propaganda gains that go with them.
These are going to be difficult decisions for the Government, because they have to factor in many different areas. Sometimes people say that gesture politics is no politics. I would say no. I would say that this is a gesture that does make a difference. It is a gesture that defends the rules that keep us all safe, defends the cultures that keep us all free and defends our own ability to co-operate fairly and to avoid conflict. The rules matter: they make us richer, they make us safer, they protect Britain, they protect our friends and, if they are allowed to, they will once again protect the people of China.
That brings me to the topic of our debate: the role of the Beijing winter Olympics and human rights abuses by the CCP—to repeat what has been said many times, it is the Chinese Communist party that is committing these atrocities, not the people of China. I have already touched on the terrible crimes in Xinjiang, but we must remember the context of human rights abuse in places such as Tibet, the CCP’s attempt to dismantle democracy and liberty in Hong Kong, the ever more dangerous rhetoric around Taiwan, and the CCP’s ongoing activities in the South China sea in the face of UN rulings.
Western countries have to take a stance. We must be aware that the Olympics next year will be used to give credibility to the regime, as we have heard several times today. Whether we like it or not, they will serve as a propaganda tool. It would be absolutely unacceptable for the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary or senior diplomats and officials to give credibility to such an event.
If the games go ahead, it is vital that the International Olympic Committee adjust its own rules. Rule 50 of the Olympic charter prevents athletes from speaking out or making peaceful demonstrations or protests in the field of play or during medal ceremonies. It is totally unacceptable that competitors should be gagged in that way under the threat of sanctions from the IOC. The justification for the rule is to keep politics out of sport, but as we have heard, the event will be used politically by the Chinese communist party. The reality is that a protest-free games would be just as political as one in which athletes were allowed to express their opinions.
Finally, we must be realistic about whether it is at all appropriate for the games to go ahead in Beijing, given the ongoing human rights abuses. I want to go a little further: is it at all justifiable for the games to go ahead? In such grave circumstances, it is vital for the option of a full sporting boycott of the games at least to remain on the table. There is growing consensus about the diplomatic boycott of the Beijing winter Olympics, but I wonder whether we should dare to go further.
Across the House, we are outraged about the horrific human rights abuses by the CCP against millions of its own people. Critics are becoming more and more aware, but the Chinese communist party is becoming more and more emboldened the longer the rest of the world stands by. Let’s get real—and let us start today by supporting the motion.
My hon. Friend the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee was in his place for the urgent question earlier about the UK semiconductor company to be sold to a Chinese company. One thing I did not raise but we know is that China has strategically said that semiconductor production must come to China and that it must dominate globally. More importantly, it wants to use that production as a weapon against Taiwan, which is probably the biggest single producer of semiconductors. China wants to stop that cash flow to Taiwan, so one of China’s reasons for taking over the UK company is to increase its own capability and stop Taiwan. Not a single thing that the Chinese Communist party does has not been thought through to the final degree. It knows where it is going, and it does not even hide it. It was said that the Chinese Government threaten that anybody who affronts them will have their head bashed against a wall of steel. I do not think that when something like that is said, everybody laughs. Imagine if the British Government were to say that about anybody who disagreed with them. We would all be up in arms and everybody around the free world would be complaining.
Everything is political in a communist regime. Every single aspect of people’s lives is governed by a communist political regime. Our Government must recognise that they are no longer dealing with a decent organisation that would uphold freedoms; they are dealing with a dictatorial, militaristic, intolerant and oppressive regime. Every time that we give China public demonstrations such as the Olympics, we do ourselves and, worse, the Uyghurs, the Tibetans and all those oppressed people a disfavour. Let us stand up for freedom, democracy and human rights and not back these games.