Over 130 UK MPs write letter to Chinese envoy on Nazi like treatment of Uyghurs

New Delhi: Over 130 British MPs have written to China’s Ambassador to the UK pulling up Beijing on the ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs.

The letter, written by Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh, tells Chinese Ambassador to UK Liu Xiaoming that “chilling” footage of Uighur Muslims being sent to internment camps in China was similar to “historical footage of Nazi concentration camps”.

“The Chinese Government’s actions must be stated for what they are: a systematic and calculated program of ethnic cleansing against the Uighur people,” the cross-party members of the House of Commons and House of Lords wrote in a letter dated Tuesday. “When the world is presented with such overwhelming evidence of gross human rights abuses, nobody can turn a blind eye.”


The group of parliamentarians – which includes Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey and former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith – expressed their “absolute condemnation” of the Chinese state, while accusing it of conducting a “systematic and calculated programme of ethnic cleansing against the Uighur people”.

It has been estimated that one million Uyghurs are being held in camps in Xinjiang.

Evidence has also been uncovered of forced sterilisations of Uyghur women, with birth rates falling by as much as 60 per cent in some areas of Xinjiang.

Liu became a source of controversy in July, after he was shown footage during a BBC interview of hundreds of chained Uihurs being loaded onto trains headed for camps.

The Chinese ambassador responded to the footage by saying Xinjiang was the most beautiful place in China, before adding that the video was just a “transfer of prisoners” and that Uyghurs have a “harmonious” life.

In July, UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab accused Beijing of committing “gross, egregious human rights abuses” against Uighurs.