Uyghur Tribunal Judgment

Layla Moran Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) on securing the debate on an issue close to the heart of everyone in this Chamber. I thank Sir Geoffrey Nice and the World Uyghur Congress for their incredibly important work day in, day out for months.

As foreign affairs spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, I put it on the record that all Liberal Democrats everywhere stand shoulder to shoulder with the Uyghur people, who are being persecuted as we speak.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) secured the first debate on this subject in Westminster Hall in January 2019. Here we are, this many years later, and the Government have still done nothing. That is shameful, and it is painful for those victims, who watch debates such as this, which every time give them that bit of hope. They reward those of us who speak out with very humbling certificates of appreciation. I was looking at mine, which I have proudly on my desk. It was given to me by the World Uyghur Congress and on it is a quote from Nobel laureate and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel:

“what hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander.”

In this Government, I am afraid, a bystander is all they have.

When hon. Members have spoken out against the appalling treatment of the Uyghurs and voted to declare a genocide last year, we were challenged by sceptics. I have no doubt that we will all go back to our offices and open our inboxes to find another debunking email, likely from the Chinese themselves, saying how everything we are saying is untrue. I am afraid to say that with the tribunal comes irrefutable proof that has been carefully put together. The tribunal provides the clearest evidence, beyond any reasonable doubt, and what harrowing evidence it is of abhorrent violence, children taken from their families, systematic sexual violence against women and girls, forced sterilisation and abortion, forced cultural assimilation and desecration. One witness said:

“I have no words to describe the inhuman cruelty of the violence.”

After recounting the torture she endured, she said:

“I can’t cry and I can’t die, I must see them pay for this. I am already a walking corpse, my soul and heart are dead.”

What is even more concerning is that British consumers, right now, are unknowingly complicit in this violence. It has been noted in previous speeches today and in reports led by the hon. Member for Wealden and the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee that we need to clean up our supply chains in this country. I am appalled that the Government still have not implemented the recommendation not just of the BEIS Committee but of the Foreign Affairs Committee to ban the import of cotton products known to have been produced in Xinjiang. This helps businesses, by the way. After much consumer pressure, Nike, Adidas and H&M declared that they were on the same side of the Uyghur people and that they would clean up their supply chains. The result was that the Chinese Government pressed people in China to stop buying those brands, whose reward for taking a brave stance was to lose profits in China. It should not have to be that way. We can legislate in this place so that companies do not have to make those choices.

Incidentally, it is not just about cotton; it is also about the supply of data, which is an issue I have previously raised in this House. One such company is ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok—I dare people to floss at their earliest convenience, and I mean the dance rather than looking after their teeth. It is deeply concerning that our children, who are the main consumers of TikTok, are inadvertently helping a company owned by ByteDance. It is concerning because ByteDance signed a co-operation agreement with the Chinese Communist party’s Ministry of Public Security. According to Human Rights Watch, ByteDance plays

“a significant role in facilitating and entrenching the Chinese government’s censorship, surveillance, and propaganda regime inside China.”

Another company, Huawei, has been implicated in using surveillance technology in the detention camps, so we need to fix the supply chains not just of goods, but of data.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

On that very valid point—I congratulate the hon. Lady on what she is saying—over the past few weeks, Intel and Tesla have hit the headlines because of trading with Xinjiang. The US introduced a Bill at the end of December banning companies from using goods from Xinjiang province in their supply chains. Does she agree—I think everyone in the House today does—that we should do that in this House and encourage all our European neighbours to do the same thing?

[Layla Moran]

I thank the hon. Member very much for his intervention. I agree absolutely—that is literally what I was about to say—and the fact that he said it reinforces the point that there is appetite in this House to legislate for this, and we should do so at the earliest possible opportunity. The US has already done that and, moreover, it has done the very basic thing of saying that a genocide is occurring. The US Government have said, cross-party, that that is happening, yet our Government still have not—notwithstanding the fact that it is our legal, not just our moral, obligation to do that now.

Let us reflect on why the Government are perhaps being so reticent. The fact is that, since 2011, our trade with China has doubled, going from £46 billion to £93 billion. It is also worth noting that trade grew at its fastest rate when the now Foreign Secretary was Trade Secretary. In her role as Trade Secretary, she refused to take amendments to the Trade Bill—now the Trade Act 2021—on human rights and genocide.

I have been delighted to read that, since then, there has been a bit of a damascene conversion and I understand that the Foreign Secretary has agreed privately that a genocide is occurring. If that is what they think privately, think what it would mean if they came out and said it publicly and worked with Cabinet colleagues, so that across all Departments, we can remove this blight from our statute book. It should not be left to individual consumers and individual companies to make those choices. We know that a genocide is occurring. We know that acting is the right thing to do. I urge the Minister to do what other Ministers before her have perhaps been scared to do: speak the truth, declare that a genocide is happening to the Uyghur people, and do not be that silent bystander.