China: Genocide

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for yet again bringing to the attention of your Lordships’ House, of the country and, I hope, of the Government the importance of looking at what is happening in China, particularly in the Xinjiang region. He has put such great effort into this that we need to stop and try to understand why the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office seems to find it so difficult to recognise a genocide going on. He made it clear that there are various ways of looking at a genocide; there are aspects of understanding it. Essex Court Chambers has made it clear that it believes that all aspects of genocide are visible in Xinjiang province.

This is not a new issue; it has not suddenly come on the horizon. We have been hearing about it and debating it for months, years or, in the case of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, decades. So why does the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office find it so difficult to acknowledge this as a genocide in progress, particularly if former Foreign Secretary and now Prime Minister Boris Johnson was baffled and the current Foreign Secretary sees it as a genocide in progress, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, has just pointed out? Surely if the Foreign Secretary believes that something is a genocide, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office should look very closely at it.

It is worth reading out an extract from an ICJ ruling from 2007 on the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina v Serbia and Montenegro. Paragraph 431 stated that

“a State’s obligation to prevent, and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed. From that moment onwards, if the State has available to it means likely to have a deterrent effect on those suspected of preparing genocide, or reasonably suspected of harbouring specific intent … it is under a duty to make such use of these means as the circumstances permit”.

The House of Commons has already called the situation in Xinjiang a genocide against the Uighur people. The Foreign Secretary believes that it is a genocide happening right now. How can Her Majesty’s Government say that they did not know? How are they not in breach of their duties under the convention on genocide? Surely they have to admit that they are aware of this issue.

One of my academic colleagues some years ago gave a presentation from a book that she had written on the recognition of genocide. She suggested that European Governments were often reluctant to name genocides precisely because they felt that, if they did so, they would have to take action. You cannot just turn away if you know something to be a genocide. Can the Minister explain to us why the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, unlike its Secretary of State and unlike the House of Commons, thinks that somehow this is not a genocide in the making?

We are hearing about forced labour, forced abortions, forced sterilisations, family separations and transfer of people of the Uighur minority and other minorities across China. It is a genocide potentially on the grounds of ethnicity but, since we are also talking about Muslim minorities, there is potentially another aspect of genocide. What work are Her Majesty’s Government doing to look into what is happening and to consider what action they can take? Magnitsky sanctions can be used; I declare an interest as an officer of the new APPG on Magnitsky Sanctions. What work are the Government doing to identify individuals? We have heard in previous debates that people have been named but not yet sanctioned. Could the Government look into who has been involved in causing genocide and perhaps sanction some more people?

I raised a question on 21 October about labelling of textiles. The Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone —kindly wrote to me and said that the Government do not require the origins of goods to be named, except for food products. Very often, something says “Made in China”. Many of your Lordships are wearing masks, as required. Please look where your masks were made. Can we consider whether we believe that any of the supply chain could have included slave labour? Are we perhaps all complicit?