My Lords, I, too, begin by paying personal tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his courage, determination and persistence in confronting the appalling crime of genocide.
We can argue the criteria of what constitutes genocide and who should determine whether it applies to the actions taken for many years, but especially since the 2014 campaign, against the Uighurs in Xinjiang. As we have heard, the actions of genocide include arbitrary detention and incarceration, torture, death, enforced abortion, starvation and sexual abuse, and these actions are intended to wipe out a cultural, ethnic and religious minority. This is genocide according to the UN convention, as we have heard from many speakers so far.
The US Secretary of State and the Foreign Secretary recently referred to the treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang province as genocide. According to international law, this requires the US and UK Governments to act to stop and prevent further efforts to destroy the Uighur ethnic community. However, increasingly strong-arm tactics or confrontation by western nations risks the way forward in building vital relationships with the PRC. As the UK and USA are as yet still to be regarded as firm allies, could the Minister expand on joint work and agreements between our two countries on this issue? An impasse such as we have in relation to the PRC has, in the past, called out the best in the UK’s foreign relations armoury, namely intensive and extensive diplomacy. To what extent is this happening and what is the reception of these—I hope—joint efforts in the PRC?
We know that the economic reach of the PRC is now worldwide and that it threatens any nation that thwarts its expansionist intentions. But there are still areas in which the UK and the US, among other countries, could bring effective pressure—for example, by providing an economic alternative for Amazon’s apparently insatiable need for cotton currently provided by the PRC, much of it from Xinjiang province; working with Facebook to persuade this mammoth enterprise to cease taking PRC propaganda advertising space; or confronting Disney film about its carefree use of Xinjiang province, even inserting the concentration camps in some background shots and profusely crediting the PRC authorities for such use.
I hope I may be forgiven for considering what might be the wider consequences of this failure to confront the PRC on what is happening to the Uighurs—that is, what might happen to Taiwan. The USA appears to have shifted somewhat beyond its erstwhile policy of “strategic ambiguity” with reference to Taiwan. Does this imply that the USA and the UK are now contemplating the increased provision of deterrence armaments to the Taiwanese Government in anticipation of further aggression and possibly even invasion by the PRC? If this is not the case, might the Minister indicate any recent shifts in response to the PRC’s stated intention to reclaim Taiwan? Would the Minister be able to say if a strong, united and multilateral intention to defend Taiwan’s democracy would have a delaying effect on the PRC’s actions?
Does the patrolling of the Taiwan Strait by the US warship and of similar passages by the navies of the UK, Canada and France signal the intention to go beyond the optics? The mantra of “one country, two systems” has suffered a shocking demise in Hong Kong. There is still time to prevent a similar outcome for Taiwan, but this surely means that there must be contingency plans, which must take effect immediately.
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