Lawmakers from UK, EU and other countries call for blacklists over Uygur treatment in Xinjiang
- Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China members call for bans similar to the US Commerce Department’s Entity List
- Lawmakers want to force investment firms to divest from companies with ties to forced labour and other abuses
The group, which includes politicians from Australia, Canada and India, urged their governments to create blacklists similar to the US Commerce Department’s Entity List to force investment firms to divest from companies with ties to forced labour and other alleged abuses in the region.
The Entity List bars sanctioned companies from buying from American suppliers. It is one of several sanctions initiatives used by the US.
“HSBC has not invested in Xinjiang Tianye,” the bank said. “Many firms provide custodial services for non-US customers who want to trade in this or related stocks. This does not contravene any sanctions.”
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More than a dozen members of Britain’s Parliament called on British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government to create an investment blacklist.
The lawmakers also urged the government to meet with senior executives at HSBC to discuss whether trading shares in Xinjiang Tianye was in line with its commitments in its modern slavery statement, as required under Britain’s Modern Slavery Act.
“As the Uygur people continue to suffer intolerable abuse at the hands of the Chinese government – which a growing number of independent legal experts believe to constitute genocide and crimes against humanity – we cannot allow our financial firms to bankroll these atrocities,” Helena Kennedy, a Labour peer in the House of Lords, and Iain Duncan Smith, a Conservative member of the House of Commons, wrote in a letter signed by the MPs.
Kennedy and Smith were among a group of British politicians sanctioned by Beijing last year.
On the same day, France’s parliament passed a motion calling for the French government to condemn China for “crimes against humanity and genocide”.
British MPs voted in April 2021 to declare that China was committing genocide against the Uygurs. However, the UK government has declined to make a similar declaration, saying that lies with international courts and it has taken other actions to address abuses in the region.