Human Rights Update

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. Asylum applications are quite rightly done independently, rather than just on a political whim. He refers to the definition in the genocide convention. Before coming to the House, I worked on war crimes, including in The Hague. It is very rare that a tribunal has found human rights abuses to amount to genocide because of the specific legal definition, but we do think the right thing is that a tribunal, whether it is domestic or international, makes that judgment.

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

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement today, but it is one element of so much more that needs to be done. Everything he referred to as industrial scale assaults on human rights against the Uyghurs has been committed by the Chinese Government against the Tibetans since 1959, until recently by one Chen Quanguo, who brought what he called “ethnic stability”—it is what we know as “ethnic cleansing”—to Tibet and who is now bringing genocide to the people of Xinjiang. So why is he not on the list? And when our Five Eyes partners, such as America and Canada, and allies such as the Netherlands have referred to this as genocide, and many other countries are considering doing so, why can we not call it out for what it is: genocide, pure and simple?

[Dominic Raab]

The reality is that genocide has a very, very complex legal definition, which is why, in war crimes tribunals since Nuremberg, it has very rarely been found. The right thing to do is to respect the legal definition and allow a court to make those determinations. It is principally for the purposes of finding criminal accountability, but I understand the wider points that my hon. Friend makes.