Starting from Netherlands, European countries become vocal about the Uyghur genocide
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Amsterdam, Feb 26: The Dutch Parliament on Thursday passed a motion on Feb 25 stating that the Chinese treatment of the Uyghur minority is a 'genocide'. The Netherlands becomes the first European country to take such a move. The motion can possibly encourage other European parliaments to advance similar statements.
Surprisingly, the move comes a week after the outgoing Foreign Minister Stef Blok said that the Dutch govt wasn't ready to declare the situation in the northwestern region of Xinjiang as a genocide. Rather he had preferred terming that the situation was "large-scale human rights violations against Uyghurs." The Dutch MPs wanted the govt to go further.
MP Sjoerd Sjoerdsma said in the Dutch Parliament that "The detention camps where it is estimated that more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are locked up are so big that you can see them from space," Sjoerdsma said before the vote, calling the encampment "the largest mass incarceration of ethnic minorities since World War II."
On Feb 22, Canada's House of Commons has voted overwhelmingly to declare China's treatment of its Uyghur minority population a genocide. The motion which passed 266 to 0, was supported by all opposition parties and a handful of lawmakers from the governing Liberal Party. In the US, the previous Trump administration determined that China has committed genocide against Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang and said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) must be held accountable for its acts against humanity.
Recently, the European Union Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell called on China to allow independent rights observers 'meaningful access' into the Xinjiang province to probe abuses. Borrell said, "I want to reiterate the European Union's call on China to comply with its obligations on the national and international law to respect and protect human rights including the rights of persons belonging to minorities in Xinjiang, in Tibet, and in Inner Mongolia."