Raab attacks China’s ‘repression’
Britain accused China yesterday of committing human rights abuses ‘‘on an industrial scale’’ against Uighur Muslims as the Foreign Office announced measures to stop UK firms using products sourced from Uighur labour camps.
Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, said Beijing was guilty of ‘‘truly harrowing’’ repression of the Uighur minority, with mosques destroyed, women forcibly sterilised and widespread use of forced labour to make Chinese goods for export.
In a move likely to see relations with Beijing hit a new low, he said new export controls would help prevent British firms – knowingly or otherwise – from using products sourced from Uighur slave labour camps. The Uighur homeland of Xinxiang province is a major global cotton supplier.
Firms will be guided on due diligence on supply chains and those failing to take their ‘‘obligations seriously’’ face heavy fines under the Modern Slavery Act.
Raab told Parliament that Britain had a ‘‘moral duty’’ to speak out on the abuses in Xinjiang, where up to a million people are believed to have passed through ‘‘reeducation’’ camps. Beijing says the camps were for teaching locals about the dangers of Islamic extremism, and that labour was voluntary.
However, Raab said: ‘‘Internment camps, arbitrary detention, political reeducation, forced labour, torture and forced sterilisation: all on an industrial scale. It is truly horrific. Barbarism we had hoped lost to another era, being practised today, as we speak, in one of the leading members of the international community.’’
He added that while China denied diplomats and human rights groups proper access to Xinjiang, many allegations were supported by official records from China itself. Abortion and sterilisation programmes, he said, were ‘‘coercive social measures dressed up as poverty alleviation’’.
He spoke ahead of the publication of a report by the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, which called for a review of Britain’s relations with China because of its human rights record under President Xi Jinping.
On the issue of Uighur slave labour, the report cited a study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute claiming up to 80,000 Uighurs had been sent to work in 27 different Chinese factories, some enclosed with barbed wire.
Based on official Chinese documents and local media reports, the study said the factories were suspected to be involved in the supply chains of at least 83 well-known brands. Many firms named in the report have pledged to investigate further, while others denied they had any links with the suppliers. –