A state-owned Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda outlet described British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab’s call for “urgent and unfettered” access to the Xinjiang region of China as a “shameless imperialist act”.
On Monday, Mr Raab called for United Nations investigators to be granted access to the province, alleging that the human rights abuses being carried out against the Uyghur Muslim population by the communist regime are happening on an “industrial scale”.
In response, the Chinese state’s most belligerent mouthpiece, the Global Times, said: “The UK Foreign Secretary’s office is making a shameless imperialist act against China about human rights that has stunned Chinese people.”
The propaganda outlet rejected the notion that the dictatorship in Beijing should be held accountable by the United Kingdom, saying that “the most important thing for us is to act based on China’s interests, instead of indulging London.”
In more threatening language the Global Times pronounced: “We should do things favourable to China, making Britain fully aware of who China is.”
“China now has enough strength to support the country to walk its own way while ensuring its own security. Forces that play politics with lies can only harm their own country in the end,” the paper added.
The Global Times went on to suggest that the Chinese Communist Party should develop a “set of levers” to sanction what they term as “outside provocateurs” who challenge the regime on human rights abuses, writing: “China needs to explore what it can do in this regard.”
The communist mouthpiece alleged that the British government was being ‘two faced’, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson signalling his intentions to restart trade negotiations with China at the same time Mr Raab presses the country on human rights issues.
“London has closely followed Washington’s lead in the crusade against China. However, at such a climax, the UK occasionally blew the horn to call for strengthening cooperation with China. People cannot help but ask: Which face of Britain is true?” the paper questioned.
Answering the question the Global Times pronounced: “This question has increasingly become meaningless. As an old capitalist country, the UK is naturally arrogant and profit-seeking, and showing arrogance has increasingly become a way for it to seek profits.”
While the United States during the Trump administration classified the persecution of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang as a genocide, and the Canadian Parliament followed suit on Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has rejected making the classification.
Mr Johnson’s own party’s Human Rights Commission said in a January report that it believes “the CCP is committing mass atrocity crimes against the Uyghurs and others in [Xinjiang]… and that is evidence indicative of the crime of genocide.”
Yet, Boris Johnson has said that declaring genocide in the concentration camp region of Xinjiang would need to be a “judicial matter“. The Prime Minister has also blocked bipartisan efforts in the Houses of Parliament to introduce a judicial review from the High Court before the UK signs trade deals with countries determined to be committing genocide. The genocide amendment is seen as particularly targeting China, which has been accused of committing genocide.
On Tuesday, the government rejected a proposed compromise that would empower five members of the House of Lords with judicial backgrounds to advice a House of Commons select committee, rather than the High Court.
A crossbench peer, Lord David Alton said that the decision to block the compromise has “come from higher up the food chain”, claiming that it was “bound up with high politics and vested interests”.
“We have failed to predict genocide, we have failed to prevent genocide, we have failed to protect victims of genocide and we have failed to prosecute perpetrators of genocide,” he said adding: “The genocide amendment is a modest attempt to begin to address some of those failings.”
The genocide amendment did pass the House of Lords on Tuesday again by 367 votes to 214, meaning that the government will be forced into a third vote on the matter in the House of Commons.
However, government minister Lord Gerry Grimstone indicated that the government would seek to block the amendment for the third time, and final time, saying that the issue of trading with genocidal regimes is ultimately a “political question”, claiming that the amendment would “upset the constitutional separation of powers.”
Meanwhile, Ruth Barnett and Dorit Oliver Wolff, both Holocaust survivors, have called on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to stand up against the alleged genocide in Xinjiang, writing: “Trade is not worth the price of a people. We simply cannot stand by when others remain silent. We cannot stand by whilst we carry on business as usual.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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