I am grateful to have secured this Adjournment debate so that I can take this opportunity to press the Government, in the strongest possible terms, to take much stronger action against the Chinese Government and their campaign of genocide against the Uyghur people of Xinjiang. This crime can longer go unpunished, and someone has to say, “enough is enough”.
While we were away from this place for the summer recess, I wrote an article entitled, “Genocide does not rise for recess”. Over the past few weeks, that has proven to be the case. Even amid growing international fury in many quarters, the Chinese Government continue unhindered with a campaign of what can only accurately be described as genocide, but where we should expect leadership and action, there is only a yawning void.
We learned this week of one of the most striking examples of choosing to look away from what is happening to an entire people at the hands of the Chinese Government. The Disney Corporation, that self-styled beacon of wholesome positivity, chose to film its latest blockbuster movie, “Mulan”, in the very province where the Uyghur people are being interned, tortured and forcibly sterilised. Disney even thanked the state authorities in China for their co-operation. There is a particularly savage irony in a story of family, friendship and emancipation being filmed against a real-life background of forced sterilisation, families torn asunder and cold-blooded torture—in short, against a backdrop of genocide.
The repression of Uyghur Muslims by the Chinese Government has a depressingly long history, but in the last few years the state has become bolder and more belligerent in the scale of atrocity that it is willing to commit—its bullishness is matched only by its brazenness. It is estimated that more than 1 million people are being held at internment camps in Xinjiang, and the Chinese Government are showing no signs of pausing their orchestrated campaign.
We have all seen the horrific drone footage showing men being rounded up, and we have all heard the stories of forced labour camps. The testimony of witnesses is becoming ever more disturbing. Earlier this month, a Uyghur doctor spoke to ITV:
“She speaks of participating in at least 500 to 600 operations on Uighur women including forced contraception, forced abortion, forced sterilisation and forced removal of wombs. She told me that on at least one occasion a baby was still moving when it was discarded into the rubbish.”
In the same programme, a Uyghur man spoke of his experience of being tortured in an internment camp:
“The torture was relentless. They beat me with the twisted wire and pipe nonstop. There was no place left without bruising. They tortured me for three hours, I couldn’t cope any longer so I begged them to take me down from hanging…After screaming and begging for so long I passed out.”
Those are two short examples of the atrocities being committed. I could go on, for the charge sheet is long and horrific.