Alistair Carmichael: It’s time for the government to speak out against China’s repression of the Uyghurs

The clamp-down on the predominantly Muslim Uyghur group has seen the imprisonment of up to two million people.

Ethnic Uighurs take part in a protest march asking for the European Union to call upon China to respect human rights in the Chinese Xinjiang region and asking for the closure of "re-education center" where some Uighurs are detained, during a demonstration around the EU institutions in Brussels on April 27, 2018. (Photo by Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP) (Photo credit should read EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images)

This Tuesday I will lead a parliamentary debate on human rights in the Chinese Province of Xinjiang. The clamp-down on the predominantly Muslim Uyghur group has seen the imprisonment of up to two million people. This incarceration, in what the Chinese government refers to as “re-education camps”, has been described as entailing squalid conditions, abuse and forced denouncement of religion. Reports of deaths in the camps are frequent.

Yet countries across the world have remained notably quiet or lacklustre in their efforts to address the issue. At the UN Human Rights Council’s 2018 Review of China’s human rights, the UK did raise the matter directly with the Chinese; but unfortunately China does not recognise international conventions on civil and political rights. And in February 2018, Theresa May was the first UK Prime Minister in decades not to discuss human rights on a trip to China. Unsurprisingly she was widely praised by the Chinese state-run media.