Human Rights: Xinjiang

Tom Randall Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)]

May I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) on securing the debate? There are clearly human rights violations taking place in Xinjiang province in China. They are taking place in an otherwise peaceful nation, perpetrated by a cold, calculating state.

We have seen in Xinjiang the dehumanisation of the Uyghurs. They are subject to mass-surveillance; information is collected from and about them, including by teams who visit their homes. Religious activity has been suppressed. They have died in police custody. Women have been forcibly sterilised. Children have been forcibly transferred to what are euphemistically called “child welfare guidance centres”. More than 1 million have been detained without trial. We have seen Uyghurs herded on to trains to be used as forced labour, and there are widespread claims of torture and rape in labour camps. All the while, the Chinese state has used its advanced propaganda techniques to play down events in an attempt to present a false picture of a happy and contented native population.

Those features of Chinese Government action have been compared to the events of Europe in the 1940s. While I hesitate to use words such as fascist, as they are so often used liberally and misleadingly in public discourse, I do not think such comparisons are too wide of the mark. Events in Xinjiang have been condemned by all right-thinking people, and I certainly join in that condemnation.

There is the question of whether that amounts to genocide. I agree that it probably does. My hon. Friend the Member for Wealden and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) set out well and in detail the criteria under the 1948 convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide and how they might be fulfilled by what has been done. I slightly hesitate. This might appear pedantic, but it is a technical question that requires a technical answer. Genocide is a crime, and it has been described as the crime of all crimes—it is the most heinous act that man can do to man—but there are limits to a Member of Parliament answering that question with authority. It is a legal question. The genocides of the 1940s and the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda were all adjudicated by courts. This House is not a court. As a Member of Parliament I can express a view on something, but I cannot adjudicate on a matter of genocide in the same way that I cannot adjudicate on, for example, a case of murder. However, I accept that passing a resolution in this House is an important symbolic move, and I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden on bringing the debate to the House.

We have seen action taken by the Government along with international allies to designate individuals responsible for violations and impose sanctions on them, including freezing their assets and travel bans. I appreciate that China’s role in the world makes action through the United Nations difficult, but I urge the Government to view the measures taken so far as the beginning, not the end, of those in this matter, to continue to put the maximum pressure on the Chinese Government, and to do everything we can to ensure that those who perpetrate these awful actions will never get away with it.