BRUTAL,CRIMINAL AND INHUMANE
Report’s devastating verdict on Beijing regime as Tory grandees urge PM to face down China
A POWERFUL alliance of Tory grandees will step up pressure on the Government this week over how it deals with the Chinese regime.
The move comes as a major Tory Party report condemns the ‘mendacity, brutality, inhumanity, insecurity and criminality’ of the Communist rulers in Beijing.
Senior party figures, including former leaders William Hague and Sir Iain Duncan Smith, and ex-Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, have endorsed the report by the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission.
It accuses the Chinese regime of torture, slave labour, surveillance, abuses of the legal system, forced televised confessions, and arbitrary disappearances and detention, most notably in relation to persecuted minorities such as the Uighurs. China has denied claims that Uighur Muslims have been forced into re-education camps.
The report calls for a ‘co-ordinated, comprehensive review of UK-China policy, including targeted sanctions ‘to lead the establishment of an international coalition of democracies to co-ordinate a global response to the human rights crisis in China’.
Last night, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab issued a joint statement with his counterparts in Canada and the US condemning China’s use of its National Security Law to crush dissent in Hong Kong. The statement expressed ‘serious concern at the mass arrests of 55 politicians and activists in Hong Kong for subversion under the National Security Law’, adding that the law was ‘a clear breach of the Sino-British joint declaration and undermines the “one country, two systems” framework. It has curtailed the rights and freedoms of the people of Hong Kong. It is clear that the National Security Law is being used to eliminate dissent and opposing political views. We call on the Hong Kong and Chinese central authorities to respect the legally guaranteed rights and freedoms of the people of Hong Kong without fear of arrest and detention’.
Lord Hague said the Tory report on human rights abuses by China presented evidence ‘of torture, arbitrary arrest and forced confessions accompanied by a clampdown on freedom of religion and the incarceration of huge numbers of people in Xinjiang [home of the Uighurs]. We should condemn such abuses anywhere in the world, and China cannot be an exception to that. However we conduct our relations with China in the future, it is important to have our eyes fully open’. And Lord Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong and a former Conservative Party chairman, said the report ‘gives a terrifying view of the cruelty of President Xi Jinping’s brutal regime. The Communist Party has assaulted any sign of dissent and has set about building a totalitarian surveillance state beyond George Orwell’s imaginings’.
Later this month, MPs will vote on an amendment to the Trade Bill that would give British courts a role in deciding if countries are guilty of human rights abuses before trade agreements are signed.
The Foreign Office says such powers should be given to international courts and wants ‘stricter obligations’ on firms to ensure supply chains do not involve slavery.
In a separate move, a group of Tory MPs has written an open letter condemning London Mayor Sadiq Khan for blocking moves to ‘de-twin’ London and Beijing over China’s human rights record.
The letter, whose signatories include former First Secretary of State Damian Green, criticises Mr Khan’s decision to vote down a call by Tory mayoral opponent Shaun Bailey for the severing of relations between the two capitals.