Human Rights: Xinjiang

Sally-Ann Hart Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) on securing this debate on one of the most pressing and grave human rights issues of our time.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Those words, often was misquoted and misattributed, can most accurately be traced back to the philosopher George Santayana. They now appear on tablets and plaques in museums, memorials and historical sites across the world. Most pertinently, they can be observed today in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp—the place where more than 1 million innocent men, women and children tragically lost their lives as a result of state-sponsored wholesale slaughter on an industrial scale. That concentration camp, and the words that can be found in it, should be taken by all of us who value human rights, including me and Members across the House, as a warning of the horror that humans are capable of when we are driven by our most base instincts. Instead of shying away from historical atrocities such as the holocaust, we must all strive to acknowledge and understand how they came to be, so that now and in the future such tragedies can actively be prevented. However, recent history teaches us that that is a lesson that humanity has yet to learn.

Since the holocausts from Rwanda to Cambodia and from Bosnia to Syria, tyrannical and totalitarian regimes have too often been able to discriminate against, persecute and murder segments of their populations with impunity, based on nothing more than someone’s ethnicity or faith. Such actions too easily and too often culminate in mass slaughter and genocide. Looking at the world in which we live today, we really need to examine the evidence of human rights abuses taking place. At this very moment, as is being increasingly and commendably recognised by fellow parliamentarians and foreign officials in democracies around the world, like America, Canada and the Netherlands, the persecution of Xinjiang’s Uyghur people is being thrust to the centre of the global stage.

Despite the best efforts of the Chinese Communist party’s officials and their affiliates via aggressive diplomacy, blatant disinformation, threats and coercion, evidence is mounting that this widespread persecution requires condemnation. From reports of organ harvesting and the forcible sterilisation of women—both heinous in equal measure—to the mass detention of at least 2 million Uyghurs across Xinjiang, which has long been the region of the world that this people called home, the evidence points to the fact that these officials and affiliates have been engaged for several years in verifiable and serious human rights abuses that not only constitute crimes against humanity but contravene article 4 of the People’s Republic of China’s constitution. That article, which supposedly guarantees the equality of all nationalities in China and prohibits any related discrimination or oppression, is undermined by the reported actions of the Chinese Government. Instead of helping to preserve the Uyghur way of life, culture, traditions and language, as enshrined in the constitution, the Chinese Communist party is reportedly actively seeking to destroy them and all those who claim them as their own. While today’s debate rightly focuses on the plight of the Uyghurs, we must not forget the numerous other groups in China also facing persecution, such as the Mongols, the Tibetans and, indeed, the brave Hongkongers.

If we, as Members of this House, wish to demonstrate that we have learnt from the horrors of recent history and show that we understand the meaning of the words “never again”, it is imperative that, where evidence exists of mass human rights abuses and crimes against humanity, such as those against the Uyghur in Xinjiang, it is highlighted, called out, confronted and condemned. That is why this debate, mirroring those being had in other democratic countries, is so important. It is also why I offer my unwavering and wholehearted support to this motion and to my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden, as well as all those other Members of this House and the Lords, academics, individuals and organisations who have been unscrupulously sanctioned by the Chinese Government.