An estimated 10 lakh Uyghurs have been detained in camps that the Chinese call “voluntary education centers” in the country’s southwestern province of Xinjiang. Here people also face curbs on practicing their faith and are subject to state surveillance.

 

 

 

 

“The Chinese Government’s actions must be stated for what they are: a systematic and calculated program of ethnic cleansing against the Uyghur 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 letter, written by Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh and signed by 76 MPs and 57 Lords, tells ambassador 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 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 Uyghur people”.

 

 

 

China has repeatedly denied setting up such re-education camps, instead said that it has established vocational centers aimed at preventing terrorism.

 

 

 

Xiaoming became a source of controversy in July, after he was shown footage during a BBC interview of hundreds of chained Uyghurs being loaded onto trains headed for internment camps. The Chinese ambassador denied such accusations of ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang, instead he said that China treats every ethnic group as “equal.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Liu 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 Uighurs have a “harmonious” life.