A bipartisan motion condemning China’s “systematic violations” of human rights was debated in the Australian Parliament on Monday (March 22). The motion was co-sponsored by ruling Liberal Party MP Kevin Andrews and Labor Party MP Chris Hayes.
Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald reports that the debate on the motion marks the strongest condemnation ever in the Australian parliament over the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighurs.
The motion, tabled in Parliament on Monday, urges the United Nations to investigate labor camps set up by Beijing in Xinjiang and calls on the Australian government to ensure that China does not profiteer from forced labor in Xinjiang.
The parliaments and governments of Britain, the Netherlands, the United States and Canada have recently said that China’s actions in Xinjiang amount to genocide under international law.
The Chinese government has repeatedly denied allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, including genocide.
Liberal MP Andrews said, “The worst and most systematic human rights violations in the world are taking place in Xinjiang.”
Reuters reported that the Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to a Reuters reporter’s request for comment.
Earlier, Australian Senator Patrick moved a motion calling on the Australian parliament to recognize the Chinese government’s actions against the Uighurs as “genocide. The ruling Liberal Party and the main opposition Labor Party blocked a vote on the Senate motion on March 15.
The United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in December 1948. The Convention entered into force in January 1951, and China became a signatory in 1983, with a reservation to Article 9 of the Convention. Under the convention, acts of genocide include the intentional killing of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, the infliction of severe mental or physical suffering on them, the forcible transfer of children of the group to another group, and the imposition of measures intended to prevent births within the group.
The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Bakhtiar Bora of the Uyghur Association of Australia as saying that “at least a million innocent civilians are in hundreds of prisons” in Xinjiang.
Ramila Chanishev of the Uighur Women’s Association of Australia said that democracies like Australia have a responsibility to condemn China’s actions. She said, “The Chinese government is also separating thousands of children from their Parents and placing them in special orphanages in order to brainwash them.”
A BBC investigation in 2019 found that in Xinjiang, China “systematically” separates Uyghur children from their families, keeping them away from ethnic beliefs and Education in their native language. China has countered that the reports are unfounded.
Reuters quoted a Labor MP as saying that many of Australia’s 3,000 Uighurs living in her constituency were desperate and anxious. “Most Uyghurs in Australia will know someone who is missing or has not been heard from for years,” Anne Stanley, a member of parliament for Sydney’s Werriwa constituency, told parliament. “People here don’t know if they’re dead or alive.”
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Andrews said in his speech that “the worst and most systematic human rights violations in the world are taking place in Xinjiang, China.” He said, “This has been happening for years. It involves the imprisonment, torture and enslavement of millions of Uighurs, who make up about 90 percent of the population of the southern Xinjiang region.”
Philip Sitovicki, a policy adviser to former Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, said the motion is a reminder that many federal lawmakers are deeply concerned about the situation in Xinjiang.
The Chinese government initially repeatedly denied the existence of concentration camps for Uighurs in Xinjiang, but later said those so-called camps were vocational centers designed to combat extremism. later in 2019, China said everyone in the camps had “graduated.”
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