Senior MPs from both the UK’s main parties have attacked the government for allowing the governor of Xinjiang to come to the country, despite the persecution of Uyghur Muslims in his province.
China has been accused of interning one million Uyghurs in “re-education” centres in Xinjiang, and MPs declared they and other minorities in the province were being subjected to genocide by their government.
However, Number 10 confirmed today that Erkin Tuniyaz will come to the Foreign Office for a meeting with officials.
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A spokesman for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the meeting would “make clear the UK’s abhorrence to Uyghur people’s treatment”.
But senior backbenchers, the Conservative Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Labour’s Sir Chris Bryant, condemned the “wrong-headed and deeply damaging decision”.
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Writing a joint article in The Times, the two politicians – who have both been sanctioned by Beijing for supposedly “spreading lies” about the Chinese government – accused Mr Tuniyaz of being “determined to eradicate” the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and being responsible for the “brutal and deathly implementation” of policies, including forced sterilisation, internment and slavery.
They said the meeting “sells out British values”, adding: “Tuniyaz will learn nothing from a slap on the wrist from diplomats, Beijing doesn’t care.
“This visit is set to be a propaganda coup – an effort by China to normalise engagement with Beijing’s apparatchiks. The Foreign Office has naively blundered into the trap.”
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The MPs asked the government to consider how it must feel for Uyghurs in Britain to see the man responsible for the “sterilisation and enslavement of their loved ones” to be able to “roam London freely”.
“If the government still believes that Tuniyaz was responsible for torture, the only meeting he ought to be having should be with the Met Police’s War Crimes Unit, the competent authority to investigate Tuniyaz’s crimes,” they added.
The Foreign Office has been contacted for a response.
