Uyghurs: Labour pulls back
The Labour Party has successfully watered down a parliamentary motion that would have had MPs label Beijing’s abuse of the Uyghur minority as ‘‘genocide’’.
Instead, The Dominion Post understands, a revised version will ask MPs to confirm ‘‘possible human rights abuses’’ are occurring.
After deliberations yesterday, the ACT party has gained support from all political parties for the revised motion to be debated in the House.
The motion’s language has become weaker than that put forward by ACT last week and does not even go as far as the Labour Government’s own statements asserting ‘‘severe human rights abuse’’ have been occurring against the Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang province.
ACT party deputy leader Brooke van Velden, who submitted the motion to Parliament, said Labour would not support it unless ‘‘genocide’’ was removed from its wording.
‘‘It’s a sad state of affairs that we’ve needed to soften our language to debate hard issues.
‘‘But what I have done is to ensure that our Parliament is able to talk, debate, and discuss, the human rights abuses of the Uyghur people in China.’’
MPs from each party that make up Parliament’s business committee, which operates behind closed doors, convened yesterday afternoon to reach consensus on the motion’s wording. Under Parliament’s rules, the outcome cannot be made public until this morning.
ACT will put the motion forward in the House today.
National Party foreign affairs spokesman Gerry Brownlee said he understood the motion would pass unanimously.
Green Party foreign affairs spokeswoman Golriz Ghahraman said the party would support the motion through Parliament, though it considered China’s actions to go ‘‘well beyond human rights abuses’’.
Ma¯ori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said the motion ‘‘rightly draws attention to the suffering of the Uyghur people and the human rights abuses they are facing’’.
‘‘The attempted genocide of these communities is undeniable – more than a million people are estimated to have been detained at camps in the region of Xinjiang and many are suffering from horrible inhumane practices.’’
The prime minister’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Ahead of yesterday’s deliberations, Trade Minister Damien O’Connor warned of the potential damage to trade with China.