Belgian Parliament joins calls to stop Uyghur ‘genocide’ in China
Brussels, Jul 8 (EFE).- The Belgian Parliament passed on Thursday a resolution condemning the Chinese state’s repression of Uyghur ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region as crimes against humanity with serious risk of genocide.
“The parliament took a very courageous decision,” said green party Belgian legislator Samuel Cogolati, co-author of the document, who mentioned the chamber had heard shocking testimony and proof of “torture, but also of illegal arrests of more than a million innocent Uyghur people.”
The Belgian Chamber of Representatives is the sixth national parliament to recognize the Uyghur genocide, following the Netherlands, Canada, Lithuania, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom.
United States President Joe Biden is also part of the group classifying Beijing’s mass detention of Uyghurs in “reeducation camps” as genocide.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, among other international NGOs, have also condemned the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and the use of internment camps.
The resolution has been a source of diplomatic tension between the European nation and China, which urged Belgium to amend its “mistake” after the resolution moved from the foreign affairs committee onto the general assembly. EFE
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