Following the U.S. government’s characterization of the Chinese Communist Party as having committed genocide in Xinjiang, the British Senate voted on February 2 to pass an amendment to the Trade Bill that would allow British courts to make preliminary rulings on whether the Chinese Communist Party has committed genocide. The amendment will return to the House of Representatives next week for another vote.
According to the official website of the British Parliament, British senators voted to approve four amendments to the bill, including one that requires the government to determine whether a partner signing a trade agreement has committed Crimes Against Humanity and whether the agreement violates British human rights, which was passed by 327 votes to 229.
Another amendment, which would allow the Supreme Court to make a preliminary ruling to determine whether a government signatory to a trade agreement has committed genocide and report back to Parliament, passed by a vote of 359 to 188.
Some of the controversial bills required repeated amendments and votes in both chambers to eventually harmonize and produce a common version, The Guardian reported. For this reason, after passing the Senate, the amendments will return to the House again next week for a new vote.
If the amendments to the Trade Bill, which were passed by the House last month, are passed again in the House, the Supreme Court will review whether the Chinese Communist Party has committed genocide, and the British government may therefore have to review its trade agreement with Beijing, which has been strongly opposed by some senior British government officials.
According to reports, after the former U.S. Trump administration characterized the CCP as committing genocide in Xinjiang, the CCP’s brutal crackdown on Xinjiang and Hong Kong has also become a growing concern among British Conservative MPs, some of whom have proposed adding an amendment to the Trade Bill regarding genocide, allowing British courts the power to rule on whether genocide has occurred in other countries, and requiring the British government to consider when signing trade agreements with other countries The amendment also requires the British government to consider the human rights situation, the existence of genocide, and environmental and welfare standards when entering into trade agreements with other countries, and then prohibits the government from trading with countries that commit serious human rights violations.
Conservative MP Nusrat Ghani, who sponsored the amendment, said the UK must not turn a blind eye to the genocide taking place in China today, and that “this is our first opportunity post-Brexit to show the world where the UK stands.
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