“Keep the man talking until the rozzers arrive with a stout pair of handcuffs” – Carmichael responds to Xinjiang governor visit

Orkney and Shetland MP, Alistair Carmichael, has today challenged the government over plans for Foreign Office officials to meet with the governor of Xinjiang Province, the location of widespread human rights abuses amounting to genocide in China. Erkin Tuniyaz has been sanctioned by the US but is planning to visit the UK next week to meet with government officials. The visit has been widely criticised, leading to an urgent debate on the matter this morning.

Mr Carmichael is co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Uyghurs which has been investigating reported human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China.

Speaking in the House, Mr Carmichael said:

“There’s really only one reason to have this meeting, and that’s to keep the man talking until the rozzers arrive with a stout pair of handcuffs. The approach of the government in relation to sanctions for people like this is that it allows us to deliver “robust messages”.

“If that is the strategy, can the minister offer to the House a list of the progress that has been made as a consequence of that strategy? In what way have things gotten better for the Uyghur population in Xinjiang?”

Responding for the government, Leo Docherty MP said:

“We seek in a whole range of ways to advocate and to condemn Chinese brutality, in order that it might be lessened, and to advocate for individuals. Thorough engagement is carried out with regards to specific individual human rights activists imprisoned in Xinjiang and that advocacy I’m sure is appreciated.”

Reacting after the exchange, Mr Carmichael said:

“The government’s line of “robust pragmatism” rings hollow when it is merrily meeting with Chinese officials implicated in mass human rights abuses. There is far more that we can and must be doing to make clear that we stand against those perpetrating and supporting the genocide of the Uyghurs.

“That means sanctioning those responsible rather than rolling out the red carpet. It also means further action to bar businesses with links to surveillance and abuses in Xinjiang from operating freely within UK infrastructure – a point I will be reiterating in my upcoming debate on genomics and national security. I hope that ministers will have better answers than they had today.”