More than 130 British lawmakers have condemned the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of the Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjiang and accused Beijing of “ethnic cleansing.
In a joint letter to Chinese Ambassador Liu Xiaoming on Tuesday (Sept. 8), the British MPs wrote: “No one can turn a blind eye when the world has seen such abundant evidence of serious human rights abuses. “As members of the British Parliament, we are writing to express our absolute condemnation of this oppression and to call for an immediate end to it.”
The letter refers to reports of forced population control and mass detention of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, as well as a video apparently showing a large number of blindfolded, shaven-bearded men waiting to board a train. The parliamentarians said the video bore “eerie” resemblance to footage from Nazi concentration camps.
Liu Xiaoming, who saw the video in a recent interview with the BBC, pushed back against accusations of ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang, calling them lies made up by anti-Chinese forces and claiming that China is “equal” to all ethnic groups and that the Chinese government has always protected the legitimate rights of ethnic minorities.
China has also repeatedly denied setting up reeducation-through-labor camps in Xinjiang, claiming that the so-called reeducation-through-labor camps are vocational education centers designed to prevent terrorism and extremism.
The letter was coordinated by Labour Party MP Siobhain McDonagh and signed by Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Conservative Foreign Affairs Committee, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, and members of the Green Party, Scottish National Party, and Plaid Cymru.
Geoffrey Nice, a prominent British human rights lawyer, said earlier this month that an independent tribunal would be set up in London to investigate whether the Chinese government’s alleged human rights violations against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang amount to genocide or crimes against humanity.
Nice has led the prosecution of former Serbian President Milosevic for the Balkan wars and has cooperated with the International Criminal Court. He has been asked by the World Uyghur Congress to investigate “continuing atrocities and possible genocide” against the Uyghur people, and his team has begun evidence-gathering before the tribunal, which is expected to hold several days of hearings next year in which new evidence and testimony will be revealed.
The human rights situation in China is of increasing international concern. More than 300 human rights groups from more than 60 countries around the world signed an open letter on Wednesday (September 9) urging the United Nations to urgently establish an independent mechanism to address the Chinese government’s human rights violations.
The letter notes that internally, the Beijing authorities have committed serious human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong; externally, the Chinese authorities have cracked down on human rights defenders around the world, exercised global surveillance, and promoted economic development projects that are devoid of human rights and harmful to the environment.
The group of co-sponsors, including Human Rights Watch, demanded that the United Nations stop allowing the Human Rights Council to continue to allow China’s human rights abuses to go unchecked, and urged the UN to immediately convene a special session to establish an independent investigation mechanism to hold China accountable.
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