hello and welcome we start with the
growing diplomatic wrap between britain
and china over china's treatment of its
ethnic uiga minority
days after britain joined several other
nations in putting restrictions on china
individual british mps and other
organizations have been hit by sanctions
from china
while the row has arisen over
allegations that beijing has forced a
million ethnic uighurs into labor camps
something which china denies xinjiang
lies in the northwest
of china the region is autonomous
meaning it should have some powers of
self-governance
but in practice it fades major
restrictions by the central government
uighurs living in the region speak their
own language and see themselves as
culturally and ethnically close to
central
asian nations china has detained uyghurs
at
camps where allegations of torture
forced labor and sexual abuse have
emerged
the british prime minister boris johnson
has said mps and other british citizens
sanctioned by china today are performing
a vital role in shining a light on the
gross human rights violations
being perpetrated against uiga muslims
china's acting ambassador to britain has
said human rights in xinjiang cannot be
defined by a few satellite images
and it is also unfair to the 25 million
people living in the region
the human rights in xinjiang cannot be
defined
by a few satellite images fake reports
call brought together by people
thousands of miles away
all the performance by anti-china actors
or actresses this is unfair
to 25 million people living in the
region
and also unfair to all the 1.4 billion
chinese people well beijing's new
anti-british sanctions apply to nine
individuals and four organizations
including illegal chambers
here's conservative mp nusrat ghani
who's one of the people that has just
been sanctioned by china
she told me how she found out about it i
got a call
quite early this morning from friends
and family who had obviously seen it on
the newswire i wasn't aware of it before
then
i was a little bit surprised to know
that the uk government had
put sanctions in place just on monday
against chinese officials who are seen
to be complicit
in the abuse of the uyghur that's two
million weaker people kept in prison
camps
as modern-day slaves so one would assume
that maybe they were going to retaliate
with sanctions against
the executive for example ministers and
officials but instead they've gone for
backbench members of parliament
who have just on the evidence that they
have found and
seen have spoken about the plight of the
weaker
do you know how this sanctions
process is going to affect you i i i
don't
have any more detail i mean the sanction
statement states that i can't visit
hong kong or china and that my assets
will be frozen
apparently people um chinese people
aren't allowed to work with me nor are
companies
that are chinese either i'm not sure how
they're going to make that
make that work considering my job as an
mp means i work with lots of other
people
but regardless of whatever the sanction
means to me it is
nothing in comparison to the mass abuse
of the weaker and if i have an
opportunity just to mention
one of the things i've spoken about
quite a bit in parliament
is the force sterilization of weaker
women to the point where there's been an
84
drop in the uyghur women in in the birth
rate that is a clear marker
of genocide so this has just given me
and my colleagues another opportunity
to talk about the plight of the uyghur
and the mass abuse taking place
in xinjiang that there has been much
international
condemnation and concern raised about
what is happening
there including bbc reports we're seeing
some images now
uh highlighting this whole uh set of
concerns i just wanted though
in terms of your own uh you know
personal
work and your own family are you worried
that that
you're now going to face difficulty in
in terms of who you deal with with
commercial relationships
that this could spiral upwards and put a
lot of pressure on you
my job as a member of parliament is to
work with many different types of people
i i'm not sure if what sort of impact it
will have
on me here in in the uk or the work of
westminster i think what it does do
is put out a sort of intimidation
of members of parliament to try and take
put them on depression not to talk about
what's happening
in xinjiang and i think that is the the
big issue we need to deal with
internationally
how democracies deal with political
interference when they want to
undermine the work that's taken up by
elected officials
as a member of parliament it's my job to
to to talk about
human rights abuses around the world
especially when they impact us
via supply chain and when a select
committee report like the one i set on
the business select committee report
produces a report based on the evidence
and that can identify abuse taking place
in xinjiang
when the chinese government says that is
a that is a a report made of lines it's
also undermined the work
of the select committee and therefore
the house of commons itself
um you're a conservative mp um the
conservatives have been in government in
this country for 10 years
david cameron and george osborne when
they were in charge
were seen as cozying up to china have
the conservatives got it wrong
on china systematically now for several
years because
of course it is a global superpower and
it's going to be difficult for a small
group of
mps in the uk to fight fight them
unilaterally
well first of all this isn't about us
just a small group of mps there's a
number of us parliamentarians working on
this very issue
in in the uk and the uk government
itself is the one that's put sanctions
in place um and uk members of parliament
are working parliamentarians around the
world the america
american government has already declared
a genocide against the uyghur
uh by the hands of the chinese state so
this isn't work that's just been done
here
in the uk this is less about um the
conservative
party but more about the state of the
chinese government
and the fact they've got a hard-line
chinese government in place at the
moment that
has no truck with any of our values or
international laws whatsoever
and we must be absolutely grounded in
how we respond
to china when it tries to undermine our
democracies here in the uk so
do you think boris johnson the british
prime minister should go further what
further actions would you like to see
the uk take now
well the prime minister's put out a
really stellar tweet this morning saying
that he
i'm just looking at the words again he
will he stands firmly with colleagues
who are talking out
on human rights abuses it was a tweet
enough
well no but you know we've got meetings
taking place
throughout the day we've already had
sanctions in place i would like those
like to see those sanctions extended
to more chinese officials who are
complicit in the abuse in xinjiang
i would also like to to see we could
have our investment
also considered if there are further
investments into china to make sure it
is in no way linked to the xinjiang
region so we're not complicit in any
abuse of the weaker
what today has done apart from raise the
profile of foreign interference
into democracies and the work that mps
do in parliament but also
it's enabled us to speak once again of
the plight of the week and if the
chinese state thought they were closing
that conversation down
all they've done is opened it up to a
bigger audience