London wants to prevent imports of goods linked to forced Uyghur labor

Foreign Minister Dominic Raab at 10 Downing Street in November 2020. AP - Kirsty Wigglesworth

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Faced with Beijing's “barbarism” towards the Uyghurs, the United Kingdom on Tuesday unveiled measures to prevent goods linked to the forced labor of this Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region from reaching British consumers.

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With our correspondent in London,

Muriel Delcroix

In front of the British deputies, the Minister for Foreign Affairs denounced a "

barbarism which one hoped relegated to the past but which is still relevant today

" and which includes "

arbitrary detention, political re-education, forced labor, torture and sterilization of Uyghurs on an industrial scale

”.

Invoking the "

moral duty to act

" of London, Dominic Raab has therefore announced fines for companies which cannot prove that their supplies are not linked to the forced labor camps in Xinjiang, this immense region of the northwest. from China, a

major supplier of cotton to the world.

Transparency obligation for companies

This transparency obligation will be extended to the public sector and companies profiting from forced labor will be excluded from public contracts.

Exports will also be regulated to prevent companies from contributing " 

directly or indirectly

 " to human rights violations in this region.

► To read also: Repression of the Uyghurs in China: what can the international community do?

Nevertheless, the Labor opposition and many Conservative MPs criticized measures that did not go far enough.

Beyond the symbolic condemnation of Beijing, they called for sanctions directly targeting Chinese officials in Xinjiang.

Beijing calls on London to stop interfering in Chinese internal affairs

In the wake of these measures decided by London, the Chinese ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun, asked the United Kingdom "

 to stop interfering in the internal affairs of China

 " after a British intervention on the Uyghurs during a Security Council meeting on counter-terrorism.

The Chinese diplomat denounced a "

 purely political attack 

" of the United Kingdom, after an intervention of the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs James Cleverly, criticizing the violation of human rights in Xinjiang under the pretext of the fight against terrorism.

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