London (AFP)

Faced with Beijing's "barbarity" towards Uyghurs, the UK and Canada on Tuesday unveiled measures to prevent goods linked to the alleged forced labor of this Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region from reaching British consumers .

According to foreign experts, one million Uyghurs, the main ethnic minority in Xinjiang, have been detained in recent years in political re-education camps.

Beijing denies and claims that these are vocational training centers intended to keep people away from the temptation of Islamism, terrorism and separatism after a series of attacks attributed to Uyghurs.

It is a "barbarism which one hoped relegated to the past which is practiced today", declared the chief of diplomacy Dominic Raab in front of the British deputies, evoking "the arbitrary detention, the political re-education, the forced labor, torture and forced sterilization of "Uyghurs" on an industrial scale.

The United Kingdom had a "moral duty" to react, continued the minister, announcing measures to ban imports and exports linked to forced labor by Uyghurs.

"We must act to ensure that British companies do not participate in the supply chains that lead to the portals of the internment camps in Xinjiang," he said.

It is also about "ensuring that products resulting from human rights violations do not end up on the shelves of the supermarkets where we shop here", he added.

Against the backdrop of already strained relations, Chinese Ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun, called on the UK "to stop interfering in China's internal affairs."

After a London intervention on the Uyghurs during a Security Council meeting on the fight against terrorism, the Chinese diplomat denounced a "purely political" and "baseless" attack on the United Kingdom.

- Fines -

"Gravely concerned", Canada announced to follow suit with the United Kingdom, announcing "a ban on the importation" into Canada "of goods resulting in whole or in part from forced labor".

In detail in the United Kingdom, directives will be issued to British companies, which will incur fines if they cannot demonstrate that their supplies are not linked to forced labor in Xinjiang, a huge region in the north-west of the region. China being a major supplier of cotton globally.

This transparency obligation will be extended to the public sector, underlined Dominic Raab, and companies profiting from forced labor will be excluded from public procurement.

In early January, the British department store chain Marks & Spencer pledged not to use cotton from Xinjiang in the clothes it sells.

It is the first large British company to have joined a "Call to Action" for Uyghurs, launched by some 300 NGOs.

Across the Labor opposition and within the ranks of the ruling Tories, MPs said the measures detailed Tuesday did not go far enough, arguing for sanctions against Chinese officials in Xinjiang.

The announcement of these measures comes shortly after the conclusion at the end of December of an agreement in principle criticized by human rights defenders on investments between China and the European Union, of which the United Kingdom is no longer a part.

It should strain relations between London and Beijing further, especially after criticism leveled by London of the crackdown on pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong.

The British government has spoken out against the controversial National Security Act, seeing it as a serious violation of the Sino-British treaty on the handover of the former British colony to China in 1997.

Another annoying subject is the exclusion by London of the Chinese equipment manufacturer Huawei, accused of spying by Washington, from its 5G network.

A bill to this effect was presented to Parliament in November.

© 2021 AFP