France’s National Assembly has adopted a non-binding resolution denouncing China’s genocide against its Uyghur minority.
A non-binding resolution denouncing China’s genocide of its Uyghurs was passed almost unanimously in France on Thursday.
The bill received 169 votes in favour to one against, with five abstentions also being counted.
According to a report by Le Monde, the bill “invites the French government” to recognise the Genocide of Uyghurs in the country, as well as to adopt “the necessary measures with the international community and in its foreign policy” to resolve the situation.
“State officials in the Uyghur Region have received orders to ‘to round up all the people to be rounded up’, to ‘eliminate them all… to destroy them in depth’, and to ‘break their lineage, break their roots, break their ties and break their origin’,” the proposition for the adopted document reads.
“Repressive policies are accompanied by a system of massive surveillance… facial recognition cameras, mandatory spy apps on mobile phones, automated platform for collecting data…QR code on gates to Uyghur apartments, and checkpoints on the streets and between each city in the region,” it continues.
Despite the document’s adoption, Franck Riester, the French Minister responsible for foreign trade, said that it was not for the French government to decide whether the “systematic violence” occurring in the region was genocide, instead saying that it was a matter for international bodies.
The French adoption of the non-binding resolution comes shortly before the beginning of the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
One Chinese official has already warned athletes from criticising China during the genocide games, saying that those who do so will be punished by the nation’s authorities.
“Any expression that is in line with the Olympic spirit I’m sure will be protected and anything and any behaviour or speeches that is against the Olympic spirit, especially against Chinese laws and regulations, are also subject to certain punishment,” the deputy director-general of Beijing 2022’s International Relations Department, Yang Shu, warned.
Both US and UK authorities have also warned athletes against bringing their own phones to the tournament, with the British Olympics Association in particular offering to provide Team GB with alternative devices.
China is requiring all athletes, journalists and spectators looking to attend the games to download the country’s “MY2022” app on their smartphones, reportedly for the purpose of monitoring the spread of the Chinese Coronavirus.
However, according to the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, the app contains massive security flaws, including “a simple but devastating flaw where encryption protecting users’ voice audio and file transfers can be trivially sidestepped”.
The Chinese app also appears to “collect a range of highly sensitive medical information” according to the researchers, forwarding the data to unknown parties.
Researchers also discovered a “censorship keyword list”, detailing 2,442 entries targeting topics such as Tibetan Buddhism, the Uyghurs of Xinjiang province, the Tiananmen Square massacre, infighting between Communist Party elites, and criticism of the Chinese state.
According to the researchers, the list was present in the app as a plain text file titled “illegalwords.txt”.
Also included in the app is a tool for reporting “politically sensitive” content to Chinese authorities.
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