Uyghur Tribunal Judgment

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I am delighted to be able to speak in this debate—yet another on China’s abuse of human rights. They are virtually a weekly event in this place, which is good. It is also good that many hon. Members from all parties—a growing number—are here in support of this cause, although I am surprised not to see the hon. Members for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) and for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), who take such an interest in Chinese matters, as we recently learned.

Yesterday in the Lords, Lord Alton of Liverpool, a fellow sanctioned Member—perhaps I ought to declare an interest as a sanctioned Member of the House—made allegations that China has subverted our legislative programme by persuading Members of their lordships’ House to table amendments to an Act of Parliament. That was a serious allegation into which I hope the House authorities will now look, and it again underlines the danger that the Chinese state, the Chinese Communist party and its various tentacles pose even in the heart of democracy. We heard about that earlier in the week in the welcome urgent question granted by Mr Speaker and his welcome comments about ensuring the security of hon. Members in this place to protect them from the Chinese Government.

In the Minister’s response, I ask that she addresses the fact that we are still waiting for an answer to why the Government have given £80,000 of UK taxpayers’ money to an academic to produce a report on the China hawks—that is us—to lay bare some of the criticising parties who have given oxygen to all the horrendous things committed by China. That is being funded by UK taxpayers, which is outrageous and an insult to the freedom of speech which we cherish in this place and for which we have been sanctioned by the Chinese Government.

The incredible work of the Uyghur Tribunal is to be applauded, disseminated, publicised and spoken about at every opportunity. I repeat the praise by my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) and congratulate her again on leading on the issue in the House. Sir Geoffrey Nice did a fantastic job and gave a moving and landmark judgment on 9 December.

The tribunal was carried out to the highest standard of proof with very qualified experts and witnesses from numerous fields giving valuable evidence. One might say that Sir Geoffrey Nice’s conclusions were quite timid or conservative compared with what they could have been, so in no way can the judgment be seen as sensationalist or unrealistic—quite the reverse. It was a finding of fact.



This House was right to move the motion, led by my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden and passed on 22 April, that recognised the Chinese genocide against the Uyghurs. This House was right to pass unanimously my motion in favour of a diplomatic boycott, which I think we now have, although it is not entirely clear that it is a full diplomatic boycott, on 13 July. I welcome much of the Government’s action, as far as it goes, although those two motions were led by Back Benchers, not by the Government in Government time.

I congratulate the Government on some of their words of condemnation of what has been done by the Chinese Government, and I congratulate them on the sanctions that have been introduced, but there have not been nearly enough. The name of Chen Quanguo has been mentioned as the architect of repression in Tibet, which is now being repeated in Xinjiang. I welcome the business restrictions that have been brought in for those companies trading in Xinjiang to ensure that they are compliant with section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. I also welcome the measures recently introduced on the financing of infrastructure projects so that we do not have to rely on the deep pockets of China’s sovereign funds. In the UN, the UK has led on the condemnation of China human rights abuses. We have called for unfettered access to Xinjiang and other parts of China for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which of course has been denied. Those measures do not go far enough.

The Chinese Government are in denial. What did the Chinese spokesman say about the “so-called” Uyghur Tribunal? They claimed it was funded by the “terrorist and separatist” organisation, the World Uyghur Congress, and nothing but a

“political tool used by a few anti-China and separatist elements to deceive and mislead the public…The ‘Tribunal’ and its so-called ‘conclusions’ are mere clumsy shows staged by anti-China elements for their self-entertainment. Anyone with conscience and reason will not be deceived or fooled”.

I do not call the revelations that we heard in the Uyghur Tribunal—from women who had been raped, tortured and abused, and people who had been imprisoned and had their lives completely ruined—self-entertainment. The response of the Chinese Government, who are constantly in denial, is absolutely disgraceful, which is why it is so important that we continue to call them out in this place and beyond, and that we act with other fair-minded democracies and free nations around the world and their Governments to continue calling it out. There have to be implications resulting from this. It is not enough just to call it out.

Let us look at what the tribunal came up with. It is worth mentioning a few of its findings, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden has already done.

“Hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs…have been detained by PRC authorities without any, or any remotely sufficient reason, and subjected to acts of unconscionable cruelty, depravity and inhumanity.”

It found that many had been “tortured for no reason”, “detained in cages” and

“shackled by heavy metal weights”.

It also found:

“Detained women—and men—have been raped and subjected to extreme sexual violence…Detainees were subjected to solitary confinement in cells…At ‘classes’ in detention centres, detainees were forced to learn and sing songs in praise of the CCP…Detainees were forced to take medicines by mouth or by injection that affected reproductive functioning of women and possibly of men”.

Pregnant women were forced to have abortions, as my hon. Friend mentioned. The report also found evidence of “intense monitoring” and “surveillance” of Uyghur people:

“Neighbours, members of families and other members of the community were incentivised or coerced in various ways to spy on each other.”

Many people have been disappeared. It is not just famous tennis players who get disappeared. They are the ones we know about, but so many others are just disappeared. The report also found:

“Children as young as a few months were separated from their families and placed in orphanages or state-run boarding schools.”

Such cruelty to family life. It goes on:

“A systematic programme of birth control measures had been established forcing women to endure removal against their will of wombs and to undergo effective sterilization by means of IUDs which were only removeable by surgical means…Uyghur women have been coerced into marrying Han men with refusal running them the risk of imprisonment for themselves or their families.

‘Family friends’—mostly Han men—have been imposed on Uyghur households for weeks at a time to monitor and report on the households’ thoughts and behaviours”—

of those Uyghur families, while:

“A large-scale enforced transfer of labour programme…emblems of Muslim faith were removed…acts of faith were punished…The use of the Uyghur language has been punished”

and restricted, while

“assets have been arbitrarily appropriated by”

the authorities, and there have been “relocation of occupiers”, or large-scale displacements, and intimidation of Uyghur families living outside China.

I was glad that the Home Secretary, in her response this week, agreed with the allegations about the intimidation of the diaspora of Chinese people and Uyghurs living around the world. The Foreign Office has also admitted to the harassment that has been going on in the UK, to intimidate people into silence. That, absolutely, needs to be reported to the police.

Those are all things that the tribunal found. President Xi Jinping is at the top of those who have the responsibility, the culpability, for what is going on. He bears the primary responsibility. Those things are the direct result of policies, language and speeches promoted by President Xi and others. Furthermore, those policies could not have happened in a country with such rigid hierarchies as the People’s Republic of China without implicit and explicit authority from the very top. Let us lay the blame where it belongs. We do not take issue with the Chinese people; we take issue with the Chinese Communist party Government, which is responsible for all the pain that they are causing and have caused to so many.

The tribunal decided:

“Torture of Uyghurs attributable to the”

Chinese Communist Government

“is established beyond reasonable doubt…Crimes against humanity attributable to the”

Chinese Communist Government

“is established beyond reasonable doubt”,

and,

“on the basis of evidence heard in public, the Tribunal is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the”

Chinese Communist Government

“by the imposition of measures to prevent births intended to destroy a significant part of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as such, has committed genocide.”

There is no getting away from it—there is no denying it, as the Chinese Government would have us do.

It is therefore important that we take the step today to acknowledge the truth that the Uyghur tribunal has uncovered and that we redouble our pressure on our Government and other Governments to ensure that there are implications for those findings. Virtually every day—I have a clutch of press cuttings from the past few weeks—there are stories about the malign influence of the Chinese Government throughout the world: opposition who are disappeared, or people who just spoke out against sexual abuse; instances of Chinese agents spying on students in our universities; Beijing-backed students harassing pro-democracy activists on our university campuses; threats to Taiwan internationally; or building fake US battleships for war games and target practice.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case, as many, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani), have. Does he not think that, if the Government do not lead on that, they open the door to universities, businesses and others to fall away from doing anything and not taking a lead? For example, he mentioned universities. The key point there is that, when we speak to them, they all claim that they did not really think that it was up to them to do it; it was up to the leadership of the Government. The Government will set the terms, and we will start to clean the system once that happens.

[Tim Loughton]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Leadership from the Government is essential. All of us—certainly the three musketeers on the Conservative Benches who are sanctioned—have asked repeatedly for a proper audit of the tentacles of the Chinese Communist party, which extend into our boardrooms, our university campuses, our schools, our businesses and Parliament, as we saw with the exposé earlier this week. The Government must take a lead in the country and for other like-minded nations, which need to be able to act together. Through the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which my right hon. Friend admirably co-chairs, bringing parliamentarians together who are now prepared to speak out and act in unison across the world will have and is having an impact.

We must redouble those efforts after all the revelations that we have heard about the malign influence of the Chinese Communist Government across the world, culminating in the recent speech by Richard Moore, the head of MI6, about the China threat that we all face.

What is to be done? Today, we need to get the Government to face up to, acknowledge and agree to our international obligations under the law of genocide. To repeat the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden made, the United Kingdom 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 in which one state alone would be unable to prevent genocide but in which its actions in combination with the efforts of other states may do so.

The obligation to take concrete steps to prevent genocide is triggered

“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”

or is already being committed. The UK is on notice and has the requisite awareness of the serious risk that genocide is being committed or will be committed against the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region of China and is therefore under an obligation to act to prevent that genocide. It could not be clearer.

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[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) on securing this debate. She spoke brilliantly about what the issues were and laid them out in some detail. I will touch on a few of those but many others will deal with them in more detail.

I say from the outset that the whole issue and the plight of the Uyghurs should trouble us not just because people are now being persecuted, executed, put into forced labour and sterilised. Those alone are enough to make us in this House, of all Houses around the world, stand up and say, “Enough.” But this is also about the wider concept: the more that China—the Chinese Government—gets away with doing this and the more that Governments turn their heads when confronted with the problems of calling it out, the more the Chinese Government extend their reach and form of despotic government around the world. We have seen what their purpose is: to countermand the idea of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. They have made that very clear. At every stage, they think that what we do, what we believe in, is weakness and therefore they sell their concept to and impose it on others.

What is happening to the Uyghurs is a huge wake-up call to those of us in the free world who believe substantially in the concept of democracy, human rights and the rule of law, because it is being eroded even as we hold this debate. We cannot assume, as we legitimately did early after the end of the cold war, that we had somehow won this battle and that it was therefore likely that every other country would have to embrace these principles. They do not. We have to fight for them.

The point about the debate—this is why I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden so much on having managed to secure it—is that we need to be able to say to our Government, my Government, that they need to be at the forefront and leading on tackling this challenge, not dragged along behind. To be fair to the Government on the Uyghur problem and China in general, they are not alone. Countries across Europe also simply will not admit that there is a problem; Germany has been dragging its feet on this for ages. However, that does not excuse us, because other countries, such as Australia, Canada and the United States, have now all decided that the issue is clear.

If we cannot decide on this, what can we decide? As my hon. Friend pointed out, the tribunal made it very clear. It was a properly constituted tribunal. The Government say it has to be a proper court. It is not a court of law, but the tribunal was constituted correctly and as would be done at the UN. The phrase it used, which is critical, is that it found “beyond reasonable doubt” that the Chinese Government are perpetrating genocide, crimes against humanity and torture against the Uyghurs. It is surely only reasonable that we urge the Government to do the next thing. Instead of arguing about whether the tribunal is a proper court, if the Government themselves suspect at any stage that such things are happening, it is essentially inherent on them, given the 1948 issue, to pursue this and to urgently assess whether they consider the Uyghurs to be at serious risk of genocide. I am happy to take an intervention from my hon. Friend the Minister on this, because we may need to satisfy ourselves that it is within the power of the Government to do that. It is. The Government can do anything that this House wishes them to, and this is also internationally legal.

Will the Minister respond on why the Government simply do not want to do this? We had debates here and tried to amend the Bill three or four times, and we came pretty close, I have to say. However, the reality is that I am not even asking the Government to declare this a genocide. I simply ask them to make this urgent assessment and to follow the evidence of what they find, following the tribunal and all the other areas of information. I ask the Government to start that process, that is all. I am not asking them to reach a conclusion at this particular point. I just want them to start the process. That seems very small.

[Ms Ghani]

One issue we are trying to raise is that the Government are refusing to undertake their legal obligations. On what grounds have they decided that all the evidence presented to the Uyghur Tribunal does not stand up in court?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. The truth is that the Government have not said anything, so we do not know whether they think the tribunal makes sense or what it says is a reality. We do not know that they disagree with it. It would be great if the Minister would get up and tell us whether they think the tribunal is reasonable, has reached reasonable grounds and has come up with good evidence, and whether they actually believe that a genocide may well be being perpetrated. That is all I ask—whether it may well be being perpetrated. If so, we may then start the ball rolling.

The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) mentioned that trade with China had doubled. In all this, we now discover that the country is so out of control that it does not report that it has a desperate virus breaking out to the World Health Organisation in time for it to get control measures in place. That has now led to millions of people dying all over the world. That is what happens when we refuse to bring such a country to book.

That is the problem that we have right now. China is committing genocide and hounding the Taiwanese. It has broken an international treaty over Hong Kong. It is persecuting and incarcerating ordinary, peaceful democracy campaigners in Hong Kong, persecuting Christians, Falun Gong and others, and smashing churches. It has killed Indian soldiers on its border and militarily occupied the South China seas. How much more are we prepared to stand by and watch, and all for the sake of cheaper goods? Do we say nothing? Shame on us! Shame on us that that plastic thing that we bought last week was 10p cheaper than it might have been had it been made somewhere else. Is that a reason to turn our backs on the suffering and persecution of the people who deserve us to stand up for them?

All I ask is for my Government to take a lead. We have a list of people who should be sanctioned—I am also co-chair of the all-party group on Magnitsky sanctions—and they are: Chen Quanguo, the architect not just of the Uyghur suppression, but of Tibet; Peng Jiarui, the deputy party secretary and commander of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps; Sun Jinlong, former political commissioner of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps; and Huo Liujun, former leader of the Xinjiang public security bureau. We have called for all of them to be sanctioned. They are being sanctioned by the United States. It is not as though, by suddenly standing up, we would be alone; those people have already been sanctioned.

[Ms Ghani]

A number of colleagues in this House have been sanctioned. The Uyghur Tribunal was sanctioned. Individuals who gave evidence to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee were intimidated and sanctioned. When will the Government stand up and sanction those who are undertaking the genocide and when will they have the confidence to back not only the House and the Select Committees, but sanctioned colleagues?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

The truth is that, ironically, nothing stops the Chinese Government from sanctioning absolutely everybody who speaks up against them. We here have been sanctioned. In fact, I noticed the other day that the Chinese embassy devoted a whole page to telling the world that I was a liar and a cheat and somebody who basically misled everybody about China. Okay, I am fine with that, if that is what it wants to say. The point is that our Government can now make it clear to everybody else that the problem lies at the heart of the nature of that Government. This is a despotic, brutal, dictatorial regime that cares nothing for human rights, nothing for the rule of law, and, at the end of the day, nothing for the lives of ordinary people.

I end by simply saying that, today, we see through a glass darkly. We are looking at history repeating itself. Because we chose not to speak out, because we chose to appease a despotic, brutal, dictatorial and murderous regime in the 1930s, the situation got worse and worse and we ended up with 60 million people dying. We must speak out now. The Government must lead on this and learn the lessons of the past. The Uyghur Tribunal was absolutely clear that it is almost certain that genocide is taking place. Please, will my Government stand up, broaden their shoulders and say that we will no longer turn our heads away no matter what the consequences are? It is time to make the case for Uyghurs to be represented, supported and helped against this terrible genocide.

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[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

I thank and praise the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) for securing the debate, and thank all the Uyghur Tribunal members, and everyone who has been part of this struggle, which will go on, I am sure.

Genocide is a barbaric act. It is the worst crime that humanity is capable of. Our country has a duty and a UN obligation to speak up and take action on genocide where it occurs. The Chinese Communist party is committing genocide against the Uyghurs. That is the main ruling of the Uyghur Tribunal—a ruling made here in London by a jury of independent experts. It is now time for the Government to stop avoiding their responsibilities. They must fulfil their UN obligations on the prevention of genocide. The first step towards doing that is to conduct an urgent assessment of the Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang.

The genocide taking place in Xinjiang is subtle. There are no gas chambers; instead, there is forced sterilisation, there is the forceable transfer of children and there are hard-labour camps. Make no mistake, though: these actions are targeted at the Uyghurs to destroy their way of life—their existence.

As many Members will know, I have raised many times the issue of forced organ harvesting in China. The Uyghur tribunal heard evidence from Ethan Gutmann, an investigative journalist who said that young and fit adults in their late 20s were being killed so that their organs could be extracted and sold. That is worse than evil: it is calculated evil, squeezing every last bit of value out them so that even in death the bodies of these poor souls serve the Communist party in China.

On the wider issue of how we deal with China, many Governments around the world, often including our own, are fearful of speaking out. China’s new silk road initiative has seen it invest in almost 70 countries worldwide. Here, China is involved in the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant and High Speed 2, and was almost involved in the new 5G mobile network. I praise my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), who raised such matters in our group; I was amazed by what I heard.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Something just struck me as the hon. Lady was quite rightly laying out where China is involved. I do not know whether she is aware, but it is now clear that most of the polysilicate that goes into the making of solar arrays is mined in Xinjiang, so every one that we put up supports slave labour in Xinjiang. That is an important point.

[Ms Rimmer]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising that point, which the public will have heard.

China was nearly involved in our 5G mobile network, until the Government came to their senses. It is all part of China’s foreign policy strategy to spread its influence. The reality is that it will only get harder to speak out about China as its influence grows. At some point, we have to say that enough is enough. We know what is happening in Xinjiang to the Uyghurs. This time, we cannot say we did not know: the evidence is there in the tribunal carried out here in London.

The time has come for our Government to work with democracies around the world on a complete realignment of our relationship with China. We are all far too economically dependent on China, which is why the Chinese Communist party thinks it can do what it wants to the Uyghurs, to the people of Hong Kong, and perhaps soon to Taiwan as well.

The longer the Government wait, the harder it gets. They can start by supporting the motion, which calls on them to provide to the House with an assessment of the Uyghur genocide. The time to stand up is now: for humanity’s sake we cannot afford just to stand by and watch this go on. I call on the Minister to be brave and lead the way on this issue in her Government.

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[The Minister for Asia (Amanda Milling)]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) for securing this debate and for her dedication to human rights. I also thank hon. Members from across the House for their very insightful contributions, and I will endeavour, in the time that I have, to answer many of the points that have been raised.

The Government welcome the contribution of the Uyghur Tribunal in building an international awareness and understanding of the human rights violations in Xinjiang. We have been following its work very closely.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My right hon. Friend has just referred to and welcomed the tribunal’s report, so why did the Government refuse to give evidence for the report when requested to by the tribunal?

[Amanda Milling]

Government officials observed the tribunal hearings in June and September, and Ministers and officials met the chair, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, on several occasions to discuss its work.

As we have heard today, the tribunal’s findings contain further harrowing evidence of the situation that Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities face in Xinjiang. Uyghurs and other minorities are being detained in political re-education camps, their religious practice is being restricted and their culture squashed. They are subject to invasive surveillance and repressive governance. There is also compelling evidence of forced labour and forced sterilisation.

The research that we have funded has uncovered more deeply disturbing details. Indeed, we have not hesitated to make clear our deep concerns at the highest levels. The Prime Minister raised the situation in Xinjiang directly with President Xi in October, as did the Foreign Secretary in her introductory call with her Chinese counterparts. I also raised our serious concerns with the Chinese ambassador just last month. We have been working alongside our partners to increase the pressure on China to change its behaviour. In March, the UK imposed asset freezes and travel bans on senior Chinese actors responsible for enforcing China’s repressive policies.

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[Amanda Milling]

No; we have had a long debate and I would like the opportunity to respond to it.

To monitor the evolving situation, we funded research reports from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and the Rights Practice, a non-governmental organisation, on how China is implementing repressive policies on Xinjiang. Those reports are credible and compelling and will inform future action. We will continue to fund future research.

The Uyghur diaspora also play a crucial role in our understanding the situation. We regularly speak to members of that community to inform policies and ensure that Uyghur voices are heard. Members expressed concern about reports of Uyghurs in the UK being harassed by Chinese authorities. We have repeatedly made it plain that that is unacceptable and have raised our concerns with the embassy.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

rose—

[Ms Ghani]

rose—

[Amanda Milling]

I am sorry but I am moving on.

Throughout the debate Members have asked whether we will make our own assessment regarding the risk of genocide occurring in Xinjiang. The UK’s long-standing policy, under successive British Governments, is that any determination of genocide is a matter for a competent court rather than for the Government or non-judicial bodies. This long-standing policy is consistent with our legal obligations under the genocide convention and does not undermine our commitment to prevent and punish genocide. I reassure Members that the policy does not inhibit the UK from taking robust action to address the human rights violations and abuses in Xinjiang.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My right hon. Friend has made her point; will she give way on it?

[Amanda Milling]

I am going to conclude.

The UK’s long-standing policy on genocide has not prevented and will not prevent the Government from taking robust action on human rights violations in Xinjiang through a broad spectrum of channels and international partnerships. We have a strong history of protecting human rights globally and the situation in Xinjiang is no exception to that. I reassure the House that we will continue to work with our partners, including the Uyghur people, to hold China to account for its appalling actions in Xinjiang.