The Mail on Sunday

Legal threat over Boris 5G deal

- By Ian Birrell

THE Government is facing legal action over its controvers­ial deal to allow Huawei to play a role in building Britain’s 5G network.

Human rights activists say they will seek a judicial review to stop Boris Johnson going ahead with the plan because they claim the firm is linked to concentrat­ion camps, slavery and repression of minorities.

This week lawyers for two British-based Uighur activists will send a letter warning of court action if the PM presses on with his plan – on the grounds it flouts European procuremen­t and British human rights rules. Up to three million members of Uighur and other Muslim minorities in the west of China have been sent to barbaric forced re-education centres as part of a drive to crush their cultures.

Torture is routine and children have been taken from families. Millions more in Xinjiang province are controlled day and night by surveillan­ce systems that use face and voice recognitio­n technology.

‘It is a betrayal of British values to deal with this firm,’ said Rahima Mahmut, a London-based activist with the World Uighur Congress. ‘Huawei played a key role in creating this horrific Orwellian system and people are suffering.’

Huawei was named earlier this year in a report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute that identified 83 leading global brands linked to 27 factories across China using Uighur workers transferre­d from concentrat­ion camps.

Huawei declined to comment. One source at the company insisted it complied with all laws on modern slavery and denied it was ‘intricatel­y or intimately’ involved with any repression in Xinjiang.

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