This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy is facing blowback for failing to condemn the Uyghur genocide at a meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing during a recent two-day trip to China.
In April 2021, British MPs passed a motion declaring that China was committing genocide against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, a vast region in northwestern China that is home to about 12 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs.
Following Lammy‘s Oct. 18 meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing, Britain’s Foreign Office released a readout which said he raised the issue of rights abuses as a stumbling block in bilateral relations.
“Human Rights were discussed, including in Xinjiang, and the Foreign Secretary referenced this as an area which the UK and China must engage, even where viewpoints diverge,” the statement said.
But opposition members of the UK Parliament and an official from the World Uyghur Congress advocacy group blasted Lammy for not specifically addressing the Uyghur genocide.
“On human rights in Xinjiang, the House of Commons, including the Labour party in opposition, voted that genocide was taking place in Xinjiang, yet the Foreign Office readout simply said: ‘Human rights were discussed,’” Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith told Lammy during a parliamentary session on Oct. 28.
“This is a genocide taking place, with slave labor,” he said. “Why is there not more robust condemnation from the government to China?”
The United States and parliaments of other Western countries have also declared that China has committed genocide or crimes against humanity in Xinjiang based on credible evidence of mass detentions in camps, forced sterilizations of Uyghur woman, and other severe rights abuses.
Sanctions
Duncan Smith, who is also co-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, went on to say that he heard there was a move in the Foreign Office to lift British sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for the genocide in Xinjiang as part of a deal to remove sanctions on British lawmakers.
“And I just simply say to the foreign secretary, I must tell him, that I, for one, would never accept such a shameful deal at any price, and I hope he will stamp on that straightaway,” he said.
In March 2021, China imposed sanctions on British organizations and politicians, including Duncan Smith and fellow Conservative MP Neil O’Brien, accusing them of spreading “lies and disinformation” about human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The sanctions came in response to Britain’s decision to implement measures against four Chinese officials.
O’Brien noted at Monday’s parliamentary session that when the Labour party was in opposition, it said there was “clear and compelling evidence” of a genocide in Xinjiang. He asked Lammy if he still believed this to be the case now that Labour is the governing party.
Responding to O’Brien and Duncan Smith during the session, Lammy said he did “raise Xinjiang in the context of human rights” and the issue of sanctioned parliamentarians with both Wang Yi and the foreign affairs spokesperson for the Chinese Communist Party.
“I raised that as a matter of huge concern,” Lammy said about the lifting of sanctions on British lawmakers, adding that he also discussed threats and aggression in the South China sea, jailed British national Jimmy Lai and curtailed freedoms in Hong Kong.
“It would be totally unacceptable for any UK Foreign Minister to go to China and not raise those issues of tremendous concern,” he said.
Lammy said he remains “hugely concerned about the human rights abuses in Xinjiang,” but added that it is a matter for the International Criminal Court and others to make a determination of genocide, “not for national government.”
Lammy ‘vocal’ on issues
When asked by Radio Free Asia about reports of a deal to remove sanctions and a clarification of how it classifies rights abuses in Xinjiang, a British government spokesperson said Lammy has been vocal on both issues.
“The Foreign Secretary has called on China to lift its sanctions on UK parliamentarians at every meeting with his counterpart, along with raising the UK’s serious human rights concerns, including in Xinjiang,” the spokesperson said.
“China’s sanctions including against parliamentarians are completely unwarranted and unacceptable and are totally incomparable to the sanctions announced by the UK in 2021, which were based on compelling and widespread evidence of serious and systematic human rights violations in Xinjiang,” the spokesperson added.
Rahima Mahmut, the UK director of the World Uyghur Congress, said she was pleased that O’Brien and Duncan Smith questioned the foreign minister about his failure to raise the Uyghur genocide with Wang Yi.
She added that it is unlikely the British Government would lift sanctions imposed on the Chinese officials.
“This is because the punishment imposed on Chinese officials is based on strong evidence that these officials have committed human rights abuses under international law,” she told RFA.
