Violence against Religious Groups: Nigeria

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

The hon. Member is absolutely right about the concerning rise in violence. It is precisely because we recognise the impact of rising insecurity in Nigeria that we hosted our first ever security and defence dialogue in February, which took place over a number of days and went into great detail. We came out of it committing to work together to do more to respond to the security challenges and the rising insecurity. One thing we have committed to support is the delivery of effective, accountable and responsive civilian policing. That was a request from the Nigerians, who asked whether we could do more on that issue. That is one of the many actions that we will be taking to help.

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). My thoughts and prayers are with the souls departed, and I hope that the families they leave behind can get some comfort from their own faith.

Nigeria is one of the top five recipients of British aid, receiving around £250 million a year. Yet the Nigerian Government consistently fail to protect the freedoms and rights of minorities, and the situation is worsening, not improving. The British taxpayer wants their aid to go to countries that protect the rights of women, religious minorities and other groups. What is the Minister doing to pressure the Nigerian Government to do all they can to protect Christians and other minorities?

[Vicky Ford]

It is right that we work with Nigeria, a country with which we have long and deep historical ties and very close diaspora links, as many hon. Members have said. That is why Nigeria is a significant recipient of UK aid, and it is why we work on so many different projects to tackle different issues in different parts of the country. We should not underestimate the impact of climate change on Nigeria, and it is another driver of instability. In our international development strategy we continue to fund work not only to support women and girls but to adapt and mitigate against climate change.

Xinjiang Internment Camps: Shoot-to-Kill Policy

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Milling]

The reports have demonstrated further shocking details, adding to the evidence, but we have taken robust action. We have imposed sanctions; we have led joint statements at the UN; we have taken measures to tackle forced labour in supply chains; and we consistently raise our concerns with Beijing at the highest levels. As I said in my opening remarks, the Prime Minister did so in his recent phone call with President Xi. We are taking action.

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

We are talking about internment camps for peace-loving people, people who have a different faith from other Chinese people. This is once again about a Communist Government. During the past few months, there has been a rush from our Government to remove our dependency on the Russian economy due to its invasion of Ukraine. It is now widely acknowledged that the Government started that process too late. The World Health Organisation has even said that the Chinese had an ethical organ removal and transplant system. That was based on the Chinese Government’s self-assessment, and it is now accepted—they have everybody in their pocket, including, it seems over here. When will the Government start the process of removing our dependency on the Chinese economy? If we leave it too late, it will be too hard to handle. China will be even harder than Russia to tackle, so will the Government please get moving? What is happening now is not achieving anything. I ask the Government please to take the proper action that we need.

[Amanda Milling]

I have set out on a number of occasions the actions that we are taking. When it comes to trade with China, it is essential that the trade is reliable, avoids strategic dependency and does not involve the violation of intellectual property or forced technology transfer.

Uyghur Tribunal Judgment

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

I thank and praise the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) for securing the debate, and thank all the Uyghur Tribunal members, and everyone who has been part of this struggle, which will go on, I am sure.

Genocide is a barbaric act. It is the worst crime that humanity is capable of. Our country has a duty and a UN obligation to speak up and take action on genocide where it occurs. The Chinese Communist party is committing genocide against the Uyghurs. That is the main ruling of the Uyghur Tribunal—a ruling made here in London by a jury of independent experts. It is now time for the Government to stop avoiding their responsibilities. They must fulfil their UN obligations on the prevention of genocide. The first step towards doing that is to conduct an urgent assessment of the Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang.

The genocide taking place in Xinjiang is subtle. There are no gas chambers; instead, there is forced sterilisation, there is the forceable transfer of children and there are hard-labour camps. Make no mistake, though: these actions are targeted at the Uyghurs to destroy their way of life—their existence.

As many Members will know, I have raised many times the issue of forced organ harvesting in China. The Uyghur tribunal heard evidence from Ethan Gutmann, an investigative journalist who said that young and fit adults in their late 20s were being killed so that their organs could be extracted and sold. That is worse than evil: it is calculated evil, squeezing every last bit of value out them so that even in death the bodies of these poor souls serve the Communist party in China.

On the wider issue of how we deal with China, many Governments around the world, often including our own, are fearful of speaking out. China’s new silk road initiative has seen it invest in almost 70 countries worldwide. Here, China is involved in the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant and High Speed 2, and was almost involved in the new 5G mobile network. I praise my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), who raised such matters in our group; I was amazed by what I heard.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Something just struck me as the hon. Lady was quite rightly laying out where China is involved. I do not know whether she is aware, but it is now clear that most of the polysilicate that goes into the making of solar arrays is mined in Xinjiang, so every one that we put up supports slave labour in Xinjiang. That is an important point.

[Ms Rimmer]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising that point, which the public will have heard.

China was nearly involved in our 5G mobile network, until the Government came to their senses. It is all part of China’s foreign policy strategy to spread its influence. The reality is that it will only get harder to speak out about China as its influence grows. At some point, we have to say that enough is enough. We know what is happening in Xinjiang to the Uyghurs. This time, we cannot say we did not know: the evidence is there in the tribunal carried out here in London.

The time has come for our Government to work with democracies around the world on a complete realignment of our relationship with China. We are all far too economically dependent on China, which is why the Chinese Communist party thinks it can do what it wants to the Uyghurs, to the people of Hong Kong, and perhaps soon to Taiwan as well.

The longer the Government wait, the harder it gets. They can start by supporting the motion, which calls on them to provide to the House with an assessment of the Uyghur genocide. The time to stand up is now: for humanity’s sake we cannot afford just to stand by and watch this go on. I call on the Minister to be brave and lead the way on this issue in her Government.

China’s Policy on its Uighur Population

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I congratulate the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) on securing this important debate and his powerful, factual speech.

The situation in the People’s Republic of China for Uighurs and other ethnic and religious minorities is beyond disgusting. It taints the meaning of humanity and compassion. In Xinjiang, we see an oppressive system that brings all the powers of the state down on a disenfranchised minority, whose culture and people have committed no crime, but the state has determined their very existence to be a crime.

Across Xinjiang, we see Uighurs in their millions being imprisoned in detention centres and re-education camps. They are under constant surveillance. Their biometric data is forcibly taken by the state. There are restrictions on travel and their phones are monitored.

The Government claim that those are preventative measures against Islamic extremism. However, the disproportionate nature of those oppressive acts shows that they are systematic, racially motivated actions by the state. It is not just limited to the Uighurs; it extends to other minority groups, such as Christians, Tibetans and Falun Gong.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination are all raising grave concerns about the Chinese Government. Even more horrifying are the findings of the independent China Tribunal, which is chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, a leading war crimes prosecutor. The tribunal released its 562-page report on 1 March. It found unanimously and beyond all reasonable doubt that China is operating a forced organ-harvesting programme on prisoners of conscience and on ethnic and religious minorities, such as Uighurs and Falun Gong. The organs, which are forcibly taken from healthy living people, are either given to Han Chinese or sold to wealthy tourists, who are willing to pay vast sums to extend their own lives at the expense of other human beings. Sir Geoffrey Nice QC has been quoted as saying that

“It is now the responsibility of all those who interact with the Chinese government and international bodies to remember the duty every individual, and every organ of society, has to respect the entitlement of all on this planet, near or far, to the right to life. This cannot be done by wilful ‘blindness’ or ‘deafness,’ ‘pragmatic’ silence and inactivity. It requires action.”

Despite that, the World Health Organisation reports that China operates

“an ethical, voluntary organ transplant system in accordance with international standards”.

We would be right to ask how that can be, when the China Tribunal has evidence beyond all reasonable doubt that China is operating the exact opposite of an ethical and voluntary system. The answer is that under WHO rules China is able to self-assess its organ transplant system, so all we hear through WHO—a normally trusted international organisation—is the Chinese state’s party line. In a sense, we are asking the criminal to judge their own trial.

If I were to describe a state that was oppressing minority groups through mass surveillance, detention and re-education, and that harvested organs from living people to sell to the wealthy, people would think that I was describing a make-believe state in some dystopian novel. Sadly, that description is all too real and these practices are happening now within the borders of the People’s Republic of China. We cannot allow those practices to continue; we must take every diplomatic and judicial step we can to bring this abhorrent situation to an end.

I understand that China has risen to become the second most powerful economy in the world. However, we must ask ourselves whether will we allow the moral foundations of our nation to be sold out for economic profit, and will we allow innocent men, women and children to live and, sadly, often die in such horrific conditions in order to maintain our economic bottom line?

We have a tradition in this place of standing up for the voiceless and ending abuses of human rights within our own borders and within the borders of other nations. It is on this site that we became the first nation to abolish slavery; it is on this site that we voted to fight the ideology of fascism; and it is on this site that we stood up for nations ensnared by the oppressive Soviet Union when it was the world’s second greatest superpower. I ask all right hon. and hon. Members, and the Minister for Asia, who will reply to the debate, whether they will turn their back on that tradition. Will they turn their back on Uighurs, Falun Gong and others who are crying out for their support?

I therefore call on the Government to increase their diplomatic pressure on the People’s Republic of China and apply the Magnitsky Act to individuals in China who perpetrate organ-harvesting. I also call on the Government, and on right hon. and hon. Members of Parliament, to pressure the WHO to change the way that it assesses organ transplant systems, to move away from a self-assessment system and towards independent assessment.

We know that there is only so much that we can do in this place, but it is our moral duty to do all that we can do to help; to do any less would be to betray our morality, our history and the millions of voiceless people who are suffering and need our help.