Harriet Harman

Member of Parliament for Camberwell and Peckham. Mother of the House of Commons.

End the oppression of the Uyghur people - our letter to Chinese Ambassador

His Excellency
Ambassador Liu Xiaoming
Embassy of China
49 Portland Place
London
W1B 1JL


04 September 2020


Your Excellency,


RE: Oppression of the Uyghur people


We are writing to express our extreme concern at the treatment of the Uyghur people in
Xinjiang.


We understand that approximately one million people have been detained and held in detention camps. Those who have escaped give horrifying testimony of religious persecution, physical abuse and torture. Sickening footage was shown to you on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show in July of a large number of people blindfolded, kneeling and shaven, waiting to be loaded on to trains. The similarities between this video and historical footage of Nazi concentration camps are truly chilling.


Your interview followed further shocking accusations that the Chinese Government is actively pursuing a policy to reduce the Uyghur population with Uyghur women facing forced sterilisation, forced abortion and the forced removal of their wombs. It has even been reported that birth rates have fallen by 60% in some Uyghur areas.


The Chinese Government’s actions must be stated for what they are: a systematic and calculated programme of ethnic cleansing against the Uyghur people.


When the world is presented with such overwhelming evidence of gross human rights abuses, nobody can turn a blind eye. We as Parliamentarians in the United Kingdom write to express our absolute condemnation of this oppression and call for it to end immediately.


Yours sincerely,

Siobhan McDonagh MP

Harriet Harman MP 

+ 133 other cross-party MPs and Peers

 

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