British House of Commons says Chinese regime’s treatment of Uyghur minority constitutes genocide

The British Parliament’s House of Commons said on Thursday that the treatment of “Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region” by the Beijing regime constitutes genocide.

The motion was presented by the Conservative Party member Nusrat Ghani and it was unanimously approved after a debate in which the obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, as well as other instruments of international law, were the subject of of a call.

In this way, the British legislator joins his counterparts in Belgium, Canada and the Netherlands and the Joe Biden administration in the United States, which has also come to the same conclusion in recent months.

The text approved by MEPs does not bind the British government, but will increase the pressure on Boris Johnson’s executive to harden its stance vis-à-vis China.

The US government of outgoing President Donald Trump has already called Beijing’s crackdown on the Uyghur minority a genocide in January, although so far Johnson chose not to follow in their footsteps and leave the legal name in the hands of the courts.

Events abroad

Outside the Palace of Westminster, in Parliament Square, uFifty people gathered to shout “Call that genocide!” (Call it genocide!) to second the motion before the debate begins.

“Each of us, each Uyghur, is call on the UK government to vote for because we urgently need to bring our loved ones home, to release them. This genocide must end “Maira Aiseave, a member of the Uyghur community in the UK, explained to Efe.

The MPs leading the motion – the Conservatives Nusrat Ghani and Iain Duncan Smith supported the protest and after taking the family photo, they entered the parliamentary chamber.

The participants in the demonstration, the majority belonging to the Uyghur community, wore British, Uyghur and even Tibetan flags to denounce the Chinese crackdown on the country’s ethnic minorities. Others carried banners, like Aiyinaimu, who displayed one with pictures of their relatives with the question: “Where are my relatives?”

“It has been four and a half years since I have been able to contact my family. I don’t know if my relatives and relatives are alive or dead. “, count to Efe in Uyghur language, translated by his son Ilham. Aiyinaimu is the only one of the eight siblings to be abroad.

Although everyone agrees that the loss of communication with her family dates back about four and a half years, Rahima Mahmut, director of the Uighur Congress and founder of the “Stop Uighur Genocide” campaign, pointed out that the abuse “has been going on for decades”, but over the past four and a half years, it has done so “en masse”.

“We are living through these atrocities. We have been suffering for four years. We just need the government to recognize what is happening and act on it“Did he declare.

Dilnaz, 18, also carried pictures of his relatives and said the confusion is the feeling of the majority.

“I can’t be sad because none of my cousins, uncles or grandmother died … so I can’t cry about it But we also don’t know if they’re alive. We don’t know if they are in concentration camps. We don’t know if they’re in factories. We don’t know anything about them “, Mint.

With information from EFE

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