Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question and pay tribute to him for all the work that he did at the Foreign Office to promote human rights, particularly in respect of the media freedom campaign, which we continue to champion. He makes an interesting point. I have not seen another jurisdiction that has done it as autonomously as he suggests but, as I said, we want to take sure-footed steps and will look at ways in which we can strengthen the regime, including making it more resilient, in the weeks and months ahead.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement and commend the strong stand that we are taking on human rights. This is clearly a Secretary of State who get things done. He referred in his statement to holding up a torch and the “flame of freedom”; we must question any sanctions policy that does not target the Chinese officials responsible for the mistreatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, where more than a million are in concentration camps. In addition, an independent tribunal in Xinjiang concluded that forced organ harvesting is undoubtedly taking place with the knowledge and support of the Chinese Communist party. Will the Secretary of State join his US counterparts and act against human rights abusers in China?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. We certainly want to make sure that we can work with allies. We are already talking to our Five Eyes partners and I hope to have another a call with them shortly. We will certainly look at the suggestions that the hon. Gentleman has made. We need our approach to be evidence based. Sometimes, in the most authoritarian countries, evidence is difficult to come by, almost by definition, but I hope he will see from the designations that we make today that when we have the evidence and the crimes are clear, we are willing to act.