On Thursday (May 20), the Lithuanian parliament passed a bill finding that the persecution of the Uighur minority by the Chinese Communist Party constitutes “genocide. The parliament also voted to call for a UN investigation into the Xinjiang detention camps and for the European Commission to review the EU’s relations with Beijing.
The resolution, which was supported by about 60 percent of Lithuanian MPs, also called on the Communist Party to repeal the so-called “Hong Kong version of the State Security Law” and asked for observers to enter Tibet and open a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, among other things. Lithuania became the second country, after Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Dutch Parliament, to condemn the Chinese Communist Party’s genocide in Xinjiang.
Lithuania’s Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte and Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis were both present at the parliamentary session but did not participate in the vote.
“We support democracy because we will never forget that cruel lesson – 50 long years of living under the occupation of the communist regime.” Dovile Sakaliene, the member of parliament who sponsored the resolution, said she has been blacklisted by the Communist Party, making her the first Lithuanian political figure to be sanctioned by the Communist Party over the Xinjiang issue.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced on March 22 that it had sanctioned 10 European politicians and four entities for “maliciously spreading lies and false information” on the Xinjiang issue.
Sakalini said that sanctions and threats are an old Communist trick, and this means she did the right thing! She told Lithuanian state media that she would not be intimidated and that she would meet with Taiwan’s representatives in the Baltic states to express her firm support for Taiwan.
Lithuania, which was oppressed by the then-Soviet Union from 1940 to 1991, is now a member of the European Union and NATO and has often been pushing for a tougher diplomatic line in the West against communist countries like the Communist Party of China.
In March of this year, Lithuania said it would open a trade representative office in Taiwan this year, which infuriated Beijing.
Global human rights groups, researchers, residents fleeing Xinjiang and some Western lawmakers say the Communist Party has arbitrarily detained about 1 million Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang since 2016, and that Beijing initially denied the existence of labor camps in Xinjiang, but later changed its story to say they were so-called “vocational training centers. Currently, the U.S. government, the U.K., Canada, and other parliaments have all passed rulings that the CCP’s persecution of the Uighurs in Xinjiang is genocide.
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