Australian Senator Rex Patrick has moved a motion calling on the Australian Parliament to declare the Chinese government’s actions against the Uighurs “genocide“. The ruling Coalition Party and the main opposition Labor Party blocked a vote on the Senate motion on Monday (March 15).
Senator Patrick expressed his disappointment. He said, “It is most regrettable that Coalition and Labor senators have joined forces to prevent a vote on a motion that finds beyond doubt that the Chinese government’s ongoing campaign against the Uighurs constitutes an international crime under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”
He added that both the Coalition and Labor “are not allowed to vote” on the motion, which “calls on the Chinese government to immediately end torture and abuse in detention camps; abolish mass detention camps and the forced labor system; end all coercive population control measures and end the persecution of Uighurs and other religious minorities. minority groups.”
He also criticized, “The Beijing authorities will no doubt take this display of cowardice as evidence that their trade coercion tactics will eventually achieve what they want, and that a threatened Australia will restrain its fists from saying a bad word about the Communist Party’s gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
“But sooner or later, Australia will have to stand up, not only in defense of human rights in China and Hong Kong, but also for our own democratic freedoms and sovereignty,” he said.
Some lawmakers argue the motion is not the appropriate way to address human rights issues. But the left-leaning Australian Greens and independent MP Jacqui Lambie, among others, favor the motion.
Senator Patrick has been concerned about the Xinjiang issue, and he introduced a bill to the federal parliament last December to ban imports of Xinjiang products.
Earlier on Monday, Senator Patrick also participated in a rally by Uighur activists outside Parliament House in Canberra, where Uighurs chanted slogans of “China Stop Lying” and “China Stop Genocide,” calling on the government to focus on Xinjiang issues.
Ramila Chanisheff, president of the Australian Uighur Tangarita Women’s Association, told the Australian Associated Press (AAP), “If they refuse to listen, the whole community, the whole Uighur community, will disappear.”
She and a relative have not seen each other for 10 years. She said she believes the Australian government “will be on the right side of history.
A report released last week by the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a Washington think tank, said experts have assessed the persecution of Uighurs by Chinese authorities in Xinjiang as a serious violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention). The Genocide Convention, which meets the criteria for genocide, has been evaluated by experts as a serious violation of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Chinese government bears “national responsibility” for this.
U.S. Secretary of State John Blinken previously said he agreed with the Trump administration’s determination that the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang constitutes genocide and a crime against humanity. Canada‘s federal House of Representatives and the Dutch parliament also passed separate motions last month finding that China has committed genocide against Uighurs in Xinjiang.
Some international human rights groups say millions of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are held in internment camps in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. They are allegedly subjected to human rights violations in the camps, including torture, forced sterilization, forced abortions, rape and sexual abuse, and political indoctrination.
China has consistently denied the mistreatment of Uighurs and the existence of detention camps. China claims the detention camps are vocational and technical Education centers designed to de-extremism and help lift regional populations out of poverty. China has also said that there has never been any so-called “genocide,” “forced labor,” or “religious oppression” in the Xinjiang region.
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