British Muslim MPs have been urging the government to consider designating for the so-called "Magnitsky sanctions" on those who exploit and abuse the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, commit human rights abuses against people in Tibet, and repress democracy activists in Hong Kong.
“I have raised the ongoing persecution of Uyghurs in China. The Chinese government has now taken draconian measures to curb its Muslim population. Sadly, the world’s response has not matched the gravity of the situation.
“The systematic oppression of a whole ethnic minority who are being physically abused and psychologically indoctrinated must be condemned. I am certain that the pandemic has worsened the conditions of the internment camps and has created a double emergency for the Uyghur minority. Has the secretary considered using Magnitsky powers for personal sanctions?” said Afzal Khan, Labour MP for Manchester.
A recent petition has been doing rounds on social media which has gathered over 125,000 signatures from residents across the UK asking the government to impose sanctions on China for their human rights violation on Uyghurs. The Parliament is slated to consider this subject for a debate.
Baroness Sayeeda Warsi has also raised this issue at the House of Lords and on the floor of the Parliament and is a signatory of the petition.
“There is a Genocide happening in China on our watch, in plain sight and raised by us over and over again. Are we really going to say to our kids and grandkids that we were too busy to care?” she asked.
Only recently China and its expansionist behaviour became the subject of an extended debate in the House of Commons. It was based on a new report by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China which noted that there is new evidence suggesting that China is pursuing a birth-prevention programme targeted at Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region.
Iain Duncan-Smith, former Conservative leader, who tabled the urgent question, said it cannot be “business as usual” with China given what he called “bullying behavior” in relation to India, Hong Kong and elsewhere.
Citing figures from the report of falling birth rates among the minorities in Xinjiang, he said, “Of course the world wants to deal with China, but we cannot continue with business as usual while this sort of blatant activity continues”.
“Considering the Chinese Government’s appalling record on human rights, their attack on freedoms in Hong Kong, their bullying behaviour in border disputes from the South China seas to India, their blatant breaching of the rules-based order governing the free market and their delayed declaration on Covid-19, will the Government now initiate an internal review of the UK’s dependence on China, with a view to significantly reducing that dependence, and call on the free world to come together to ensure that this growing threat from China is dealt with together before, as history teaches us, it is too late?”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also strongly criticised Beijing for enacting a security law applicable to the former British colony of Hong Kong that, goes against international law and agreements signed before the 1997 handover to China.
