China

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his support for these measures and for withdrawing his amendments; I appreciate his magnanimity in that regard. On the Magnitsky sanctions, he raises two different issues: their potential application in relation to, first, Hong Kong and, secondly, Xinjiang. We, of course, have a process for gathering all the evidence on those potential cases. The national security legislation is newly enacted, so that will take some time, but he is right to point to that. I have been reading over the weekend reports by Amnesty International in 2019 and 2020 on the range of abuses in Xinjiang, reports by Human Rights Watch between 2018 and 2020 on the mass detention and political indoctrination, and the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination report in 2018 on the massive internment camps with no rights. We are looking at this carefully. As he rightly notes, it is important to assess this carefully, and it is a question of not only whether the abuses took place but whether individual responsibility can be ascribed to someone on whom we wish to impose a visa ban or asset freeze.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It seems wrong to be welcoming a suspension of extradition and exports, but backward steps though these may be, they are necessary, and my party will support them. Never mind the restrictions on exports—when will the Government start looking at the materials that we are importing from China, in particular those manufactured by Hikvision? It is some of the most intrusive surveillance technology to be found anywhere in the world, it is used widely in Xinjiang province, and it is now being purchased and installed by public and private authorities up and down this country. Will the Government look at that in a joined-up way?

On the subject of Xinjiang province, the world is watching, and what we are seeing is horrific. There was the drone footage at the weekend. Last week there was the interception of a shipment of human hair. I know that “genocide” is a term of art in law, and the Foreign Secretary is right to be cautious about its use, but it would make an enormous difference to tackling the issues in Xinjiang province if he would admit from the Dispatch Box that there are a growing number of adminicles of evidence that that is absolutely what is happening.

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his typically focused and well considered remarks, and for his support. In relation to UK regulation and the regime that applies to imports, we have a strong and rigorous scheme in place, and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will of course look at any individual cases that he wishes to raise. We are joined up—he asked about this—via the National Security Council and the other structures in a more closely integrated way, and covid-19 has encouraged that more broadly across the board.

On the definition of genocide, I have worked on war crimes since well before becoming a Member of this House, and the real challenge of it is the question of deliberate intention that is ascribed to it. As important as that is—it does bring with it legal implications that help in respect of accountability—the reality is that it can also distract from the fact that we are increasingly confident that there is a strong case to answer, as the Chinese ambassador was unable to do yesterday on “The Andrew Marr Show”, in respect of systematic human rights abuses. Frankly, the legal label on it is to me secondary to the plight of the victims who are suffering under it.