Uighur camps ‘a horrifying echo of the 1930s’, MPS warn UK firms

AN INQUIRY into Xinjiang detention camps has been launched by MPS who likened them to those of totalitarian regimes before the Second World War.

The Commons foreign affairs committee began the investigation yesterday with the aim of discouraging private sector companies from contributing to human rights abuses against the Uighur people, who are mostly Muslim, in China’s Xinjiang province.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Tom Tugendhat, the Tory chairman of the all-party committee, denounced “the mass detention of Uighurs in Xinjiang” which had “horrifying echoes of the 1930s”. He added: “We now have clear, undeniable evidence of the persecution of more than one million people in these so-called re-education camps.”

A “range of private sector companies” were facilitating the persecution of the Uighur people and “the reputation of British business is at stake”, he warned. The Telegraph can reveal that Nus Ghani, the Conservative MP, will also lead an inquiry, with the business, energy and industrial strategy committee, which will look into the Uk-uighur supply chain.

Ms Ghani said: “This is an atrocity. It is the most modern form of human rights abuses on a mass scale. So many basic products come out of China … we will be looking at how UK companies audit their supply chain and how transparent they are about it.”

Earlier this week, the US blocked some exports from the region.

China has long suspected the Uighurs of harbouring separatist tendencies because of their distinct culture.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the co-founder of the Inter-parliamentary Alliance on China, said: “I am convinced that they are performing the systematic eradication of the Uighur people.”

The Chinese Ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, previously called allegations about human rights abuses in Xinjiang “lies of the century”.