Human Rights: Xinjiang

I beg to move,

That this House believes that Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are suffering Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide; and calls on the Government to act to fulfil its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide and all relevant instruments of international law to bring it to an end.

It is a privilege to open this important debate on an historic motion. I want to put on record my thanks to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, and in particular Luke de Pulford, for co-ordinating MPs around the world, keeping the Uyghurs high on the agenda of national Parliaments.

Today’s historic debate would not have been possible without a key ally to the Uyghurs, and the one sponsor of the debate who would have been so proud of us all here today for doing the right thing—I hope—at 5 o’ clock. That is my mentor and dear friend, the late Dame Cheryl Gillan. Dame Cheryl was a phenomenal woman—a woman who kept men in this place in their place, and I wish the record to note that this debate is in her honour. I hope that today this House will do her proud.

I am one of the five MPs sanctioned by the Chinese Communist party. Those sanctions were an attempt to silence and intimidate us, to prevent us from raising the growing evidence of the abuse faced by the Uyghurs.

Does my hon. Friend agree that when a national Government sanctions one Member of Parliament in this place, that national Government is actually sanctioning all Members of Parliament in this place, and that it is incumbent on us all—all 650 of us—to stand as one at this moment?

My hon. Friend could not have put it more perfectly. I believe that sanctioning five MPs for raising human rights abuses was sanctioning this House and asking it to stop raising human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The whole House needs to act as one.

The fact that we are here today, having this debate, shows that the sanctions simply have not worked. I can only assume that my sanctions followed my campaigning on the genocide amendment to the Trade Bill, and my Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee report, which exposed that Xinjiang is a Uyghur slave state, and recommends that we blacklist UK firms putting slave-made products on our shelves. As we all know, basic checks and transparency standards cannot be guaranteed in Xinjiang, so businesses find it difficult to guarantee that they are slave labour-free. Let us just cut to the chase and blacklist firms who are linked to Xinjiang unless they are, uniquely, able to offer adequate proof that they are slave labour-free. The British customer does not want to be duped into putting money in the pocket of firms profiting from slave labour. I hope the Minister can wholeheartedly support the rest of the recommendations in the Select Committee report.

I also want to put on record my thanks and offer solidarity to Dr Jo Smith Finley, a senior academic who was also sanctioned for sharing what she witnessed in Xinjiang, along with a legal firm and research group. When the CCP tries to control UK groups and individuals speaking freely about their research and legal opinions, it is our responsibility and duty to speak truth to power in this place, where we are afforded protection that others may not have. The sanctions are not only an attack on us as individuals but an attempt to stifle the free and open debate that is at heart of our hard-won parliamentary democracy. If the CCP is still in doubt about what our leadership thinks of the sanctions, let me quote our very own Prime Minister, who said:

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani). I congratulate her on obtaining this debate and on the excellent work she has been doing with the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee and on the Trade Bill. As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Uyghurs, I pay tribute to the many colleagues who have been working with us over the past few years to raise awareness of the seriousness of the situation in Xinjiang.

This House has repeatedly heard evidence of sterilisation, mass extrajudicial internment, organ harvesting and modern-day slavery. Indeed, the Foreign Secretary himself described them as abuses “on an industrial scale” and as “mass torture”. I will not repeat the stories here, because I know colleagues will be talking about them in detail, but we should not have to tell them again and again to get action. I wish to use my time to put a few questions to the Minister.

First, it has become clear to all of us that the Government’s policy on genocide is untenable. They cannot continue to insist that the determination of genocide is for the courts, knowing that there is no court that can actually hear these cases. The current policy far predates the current Government. We should be honest about this and look beyond party politics. It has become an embarrassment to Ministers. It is patently absurd to insist on this being a matter for courts, which will be blocked from acting. Can the Minister tell us what plans the Government have to review and reform this policy?

Secondly, the Minister will know that Sir Geoffrey Nice, QC, has convened a tribunal to conduct an independent and credible interrogation of the evidence. Will he confirm that the Government will do everything possible to co-operate with the Uyghur tribunal, including providing evidence and agreeing to take seriously what will be a rigorous and impartial judgment when the process is complete? Our all-party parliamentary group has written to the Minister about this twice but so far has received no response.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) on securing this debate and leading on the BEIS Committee inquiry and the excellent report on which this debate is based. It is a remarkable feat to have done both. I concur with my hon. Friend’s tribute to our right hon. Friend Dame Cheryl Gillan: I came into Parliament at the same time as her and she was simply a remarkable woman. It was right to mention her in this debate because she stood with us on every one of the votes that we had in the recent debates on genocide. Even though she was ill and housebound, she stayed with us throughout; that shows some courage and some bravery and I salute her for that.

I want to raise one thing before I come to the other points of debate. I have been listening to people over the past week, and I now worry about the environment, which may seem a peculiar issue to raise first but I would like my hon. Friend the Minister to take note of this. I have noticed a number of people saying how important and vital it is—of course—for China to be involved in and sign up to all these pledges on the environment. My slight worry is that China will use the process to leverage any action that we may wish to take, so I want to make sure that when we talk about China and the environment, we no longer try to use it as a balancing point for why we should not take action against China in areas such as the genocide against Uyghur women, the treatment of Tibetans, the appalling treatment of inner Mongolians, the treatment of Christians, the organ harvesting of the Falun Gong and the treatment of other groups. All are abuses that must be called out: whether or not we need China to co-operate on other matters, we cannot simply say that one matter is worth some sacrifice over the other. It is not, and I for one will continue to call that out.

Let me come back to the main points of the debate, which are the ones raised by the Select Committee. They are really important points and my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden touched on a number of them. I wish to highlight a couple. First, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, whose inquiry is ongoing, has said that his inquiry is

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) on securing this debate and on all the work that she has been doing on this matter. The most distressing and horrific persecution taking place today is that of the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, China. I remind the House that Muslims are currently observing the holy month of Ramadan—a month of fasting, reflection, charity and prayer. It pains me that millions of Uyghur Muslims are facing some of the harshest abuses that one can imagine during this holy period.

As vice-chair of the all-party group on Uyghurs, I have been highlighting the plight of Uyghur Muslims for several years and have heard, at first hand, harrowing testimonies from survivors, family members and those who have witnessed what I can only call inhumane and chilling human rights abuses. The Chinese Government appear to be engaged in what some experts are calling a campaign of demographic genocide. I fear that the gravity of my words and efforts are simply not being matched by the world’s reaction and, more worryingly, by this very Government.

Members know already that the persecution of the Uyghurs is not new. For decades, they have faced repression at the hands of the Chinese Government, but it has escalated to an entirely new scale. Report after report has highlighted the mounting evidence of human rights abuses and shown that Beijing has violated each and every act banned by the United Nations convention against genocide. The action that the Chinese authorities are taking in Xinjiang contravenes China’s own constitutional provisions on freedom of religion and its obligation under the 1948 universal declaration of human rights.

The Foreign Secretary said in January that we should not be doing trade deals with countries committing human rights abuses

“well below the level of genocide”—

yet by rejecting the genocide amendment to the Trade Bill, the Government have done everything they can to protect the UK’s right to do trade deals with potentially genocidal states. Global Britain, it seems, is just empty rhetoric, with no substance.

Another day, another debate on the industrial scale of human rights abuses by the Chinese regime. Here we are again, and I am delighted that we are; I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani), who has so championed the cause, and wholeheartedly endorse everything she said. Together with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and the rest of the magnificent seven parliamentarians, she and I wear our sanctioning with a badge of honour.

I hope that the message has now got through that the productivity of the seven of us has increased sharply since that inept act by the Chinese regime of putting us on the arbitrary and ridiculous sanctions list. Let me tell the Chinese Government: they ain’t seen nothing yet, because this will go on every day of every week that we can possibly raise it in this place and on the platforms afforded to us as parliamentarians. They have really fired us up to make sure that that is a promise we will deliver.

I wholeheartedly support the motion, to which I have added my signature. Although Tibet is not within its strict scope, everything that has been said so far applies to Tibet and its people, who have been oppressed with similar tactics for the last 62 years, since the occupation of that peace-loving people in the Tibetan region of China back in 1959.

I absolutely take up the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green made about the environment. China is guilty of abusing not just its own people, but the planet, more than any other nation on this earth. Neither is acceptable; one is not a trade-off against the other, if that is the attitude that it wants to take when it comes to COP26. Both need to be called out, and on both it needs to mend its ways—they go hand in hand.

It is a shocking reality that genocides have never properly been called out and thwarted at the time that they happen—genocides against the Jews, genocides against the Muslims in Srebrenica, genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia and Darfur, and the many other genocides that go unnamed and are not properly detected, as the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) mentioned. I include in that list the Armenian genocide of 1915 and 1916, when 1 million to 1.5 million men, women and children died at the hands of the Ottomans. On Saturday, in Yerevan and around the world, tributes will be paid and flowers laid; I will do so on behalf of the all-party parliamentary group on Armenia at the Cenotaph tomorrow in commemoration of that terrible genocide, which this country needs to recognise, more than 100 years on.

Given that list of people and organisations that have called things out, does my hon. Friend not find it strange that no UK university that is receiving funds from the Chinese has condemned any of the action that is going on publicly, or, for that matter, condemned the action of the Confucius Institutes, which spy on Chinese students in universities?

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have long been calling out the Confucius Institutes, which are not only on the campuses of UK universities, stuffing gold into the mouths of vice-chancellors, but, increasingly, in our schools as well. When I visited a secondary school in my constituency, which teaches Mandarin, I was alarmed to see that it now has a Confucius Institute classroom sponsored by the Chinese. The Chinese are not doing this because they just like to be nice to our schools; they are doing it because they have an agenda and they are trying to control people around the world and suppress people who want to speak out against them.

I echo the closing words of my right hon. Friend. Today, we stand up in this place for those without any voice. That is an advantage of being a parliamentarian—we use our voice to stand up for, speak out for and protect those without a voice and those who are in danger. Let us, with that voice—loudly and clearly—make sure that this motion goes through today to show China once and for all that it has been called out, that there will be consequences, and that there are consequences, for its industrial scale abuse of human rights, and that, in this country at least, freedom and the freedom of speech, of faith and of worship count for something and it had better acknowledge that.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) on bringing this debate to the House today and on continuing to stand up for what is right.

China’s modernisation and rise to being a global power has been the defining phenomenon of the last 40 years, but not all communities and peoples under the control of Beijing have benefited from that rise. The Chinese Communist party has been ruthless in response to any perceived threats to its ideology and control. The tanks in Tiananmen Square were symbolic of a process that has continued largely unnoticed until the very public crushing of Hong Kong’s defence of democracy.

Today’s debate is about the persecution of the traditionally Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang province. It is about a genocide taking place right now. But, as we have heard, many Members also share concerns about Chinese actions in Tibet and there are close links between the two communities in the UK.

Today, I would like to highlight, yet again, the work of a new campaign group co-founded by my constituent, Kirsty Robson. It challenges us to learn lessons from the holocaust and to break the cycle of impunity for perpetrators that allows atrocities to continue. Its work is very much needed now.

I also want to acknowledge BBC journalist John Sudworth, who was driven out of China last month by harassment following BBC coverage of China’s persecution of the Uyghurs. Thanks to John and his work and the bravery of others in speaking out, we know that 1 million or more Uyghurs are interned in detention and re-education camps in Xinjiang province—camps that are dedicated to achieving transformation through education. It is where Uyghur traditions, beliefs and language are intensively undermined and the Uyghur community as a whole is treated like a terrorist network to be squashed.

The existence of those camps is admitted by the Chinese Government, who describe them as “voluntary”. That is completely lacking in credibility, and we have heard today the horrific reality of the vast numbers of deaths and the terrible treatment in those camps. Alongside the camps there is widespread slave labour, with hundreds and thousands of Uyghurs and other minorities forced to work in vast cotton fields and factories, the produce of which is undoubtedly—and mostly unchecked—feeding through into major UK stores. I am confident that consumers would be appalled if they realised that.

While I am not introducing a time limit at this moment in time, may I ask everybody to look at about five minutes, please? Please do not exceed that, and then we can try and get everybody in.

In 1948 the UK, along with other countries right around the world, signed the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. It was a commitment that this country made towards ensuring that the atrocities perpetrated during the second world war would never happen again, and yet 73 years later we find ourselves hearing of the horrors facing the Uyghurs in the autonomous region of Xinjiang. Removing the thin guise of tackling terrorism and separatism, we have heard the truth of what is really happening in that region’s education—re-education—camps. Numerous robust and independent reports over a number of years lay bare the overwhelming evidence that the Chinese Government are interning the Uyghur people on a mass scale, subjecting them to brutal forced labour and physically and psychologically abusing them.

I pay tribute to my colleagues who, despite intense intimidation, have worked tirelessly to raise the plight of the Uyghurs in this House, and have spoken movingly and with great knowledge and skill, asking the Government to honour their commitments under the Genocide convention. We are all aware, given the veto that China has at the UN Security Council, of the challenge that the International Court of Justice faces to be able to pronounce that genocide is occurring in Xinjiang. In light of that, like all western countries, we need to think very carefully and critically about our current and future relationship with China. That is particularly so on issues of trade, investment and domestic infrastructure and the relationship between our universities and the Chinese Government.

I am not blind to the fact that China is a major player on the world stage and that we have been told this is an ever-increasingly globalised world, although I think that that is no longer an assertion beyond challenge. However, as British politicians it is our duty to stand up and speak for those who have been silenced. The motion from my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) is an attempt at just that, but it also serves a wider awareness-raising purpose. It ought to prompt the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Department for International Trade to reflect on the role that our embassy teams in China have in terms of promoting trade, particularly in sensitive areas.

Digital and energy security are the most obvious of those, and clear moves to reassess the wisdom of our country’s links and reliance in those fields are already visible, but another area quite rightly coming under the spotlight is education. It is a mistake to allow action over what is going on in Xinjiang to be restricted to that area alone. It is about China, its economy, its Communist leadership as a whole and about our Government, but it is also about wider British societal responses to those abuses. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) wrote powerfully and convincingly in The Daily Telegraph recently about the need for the UK university sector to change its approach to China. My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has added to that here today.