Changes from resolution motion to resolution motion joint

Removedon forced labour and the situation of the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

RemovedB90435/2020

European Parliament resolution on forced labour and the situation of the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

(2020/2913(RSP))

The European Parliament,

Change 1

RemovedHaving regard to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, notably Article 4, which stipulates that no one shall be held in slavery or servitude; Article 5, that no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; Article 9, that no one should be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile; Article 18, and everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including to manifest one’s religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance,

Added– having regard to its previous resolutions and reports on the situation in China, in particular those of 19 December 2019 on the situation of the Uyghurs in China (China Cables), of 18 April 2019 on China, notably the situation of religious and ethnic minorities, of 4 October 2018 on mass arbitrary detention of Uyghurs and Kazakhs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, of 12 September 2018 on the state of EU-China relations, and of 15 December 2016 on the cases of the Larung Gar Tibetan Buddhist Academy and Ilham Tohti, of 10 March 2011 on the situation and cultural heritage in Kashgar (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China), and of 26 November 2009 on China: minority rights and application of the death penalty,

Removedhaving regard to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, notably Article 1, which stipulates that genocide is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish; and Article 2, that stipulates genocide means acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, with actions including deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group,

Added– having regard to its resolution of 26 November 2020 on the EU Trade Policy Review,

Removedhaving regard to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, all three ratified by EU Member States on 12 September 1989,

Added– having regard to the Sakharov Prize 2019 awarded to Ilham Tohti, a Uyghur economist fighting peacefully for the rights of China’s Uyghur minority,

Removedhaving regard to the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) 1930 Convention on Forced Labour (No. 29), as well as the 2014 Protocol to the Forced Labour Convention,

Added– having regard to Council Regulation (EU) 2020/1998 and to Council Decision (CFSP) 2020/1999 of 7 December 2020 concerning restrictive measures against serious human rights violations and abuses,

Removedhaving regard to the EU Strategic Framework and Action Plan on Human Rights, which puts the protection and promotion of human rights at the heart of all EU policies;

Added– having regard to the remarks by the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (VP/HR) Josep Borrell following the Foreign Affairs Council of 7 December 2020,

Removedhaving regard to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which stipulates that no one shall be held in slavery or servitude and that no one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour,

Added– having regard to the Council conclusions of 1 December 2020 on human rights and decent work in global supply chains

Removedhaving regard to the EU Strategic Framework and Action Plan on Human Rights, which puts the protection and promotion of human rights at the heart of all EU policies,

Added– having regard to the remarks by Council President Charles Michel after the EU-China leaders’ meeting of 14 September 2020,

Removedhaving regard to the EU Guidelines on the Death Penalty, Torture, Freedom of Expression and Human Rights Defenders,

Added– having regard to the joint statement of President Michel and President von der Leyen on defending EU interests and values in a complex and vital partnership following the 22nd EU-China summit that took place on 22 June 2020,

Removedhaving regard to its decision to award the 2019 Sakharov Prize to Ilham Tohti, an Uyghur economist fighting peacefully for the rights of China’s Uyghur minority,

Added– having regard to the UN experts’ call of 26 June 2020 for decisive measures to protect fundamental freedoms in China,

Removedhaving regard to the Canadian Subcommittee on International Human Rights’ statement of 21 October 2020, which concluded from evidence hearings that the actions against Uyghurs by the Chinese Communist Party constitute genocide as laid out in the Genocide Convention,

Added– having regard to the joint statement of the 21st EU-China summit of 9 April 2019,

Removedhaving regard to Rule 132(2) and (4) of its Rules of Procedure,

Added– having regard to the joint communication from the Commission and the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of 12 March 2019 entitled ‘EU-China – A strategic outlook’ (JOIN(2019)0005),

RemovedWhereas there has been a general strengthening of the Chinese regime and a toughening in the treatment of minorities Uyghurs, Tibetans and Mongols, with the aim of their assimilation, by the imposition of the Chinese majority lifestyle and communist ideology by force, intense campaign of mass internment in re-education camps, destruction of religious signs and places of worship, displacement and forced labour, intrusive digital surveillance (including facial recognition technology and data collection), political indoctrination and forced cultural assimilation; suppression of minority language education in favour of Mandarin;

Added– having regard to the EU guidelines on the promotion and protection of freedom of religion or belief, adopted by the Foreign Affairs Council on 24 June 2013,

Removedwhereas the situation in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) has rapidly deteriorated since the launch of the ‘Strike Hard against Violent Terrorism’ campaign in 2014 and the strategic location of Xinjiang as a core region for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), with ambitious production targets for textiles and other labour-intensive manufacturing products;

Added– having regard to the statement of 26 October 2018 by the Spokesperson of the European External Action Service on the situation in Xinjiang,

Removedwhereas, there is reliable information that Uyghurs and other ethno-religious minorities in the XUAR have been subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, egregious restrictions on religious practice and culture, and a digitised surveillance system so pervasive that every aspect of daily life is monitored – through facial recognition cameras, mobile phone scans, DNA collection, and an extensive and intrusive police presence;

Added– having regard to the joint communication from the Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of 12 March 2019 entitled ‘EU-China – A strategic outlook’ (JOIN(2019)0005),

Removedwhereas numerous credible estimates put the number of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims who have arbitrary detained, indefinitely without charge, without legal representation, and are forced to undergo political indoctrination to be between one and two million; the number of people that are or have been arbitrarily detained in what are being called ‘political re-education’ centres for undetermined periods of time on the pretext of countering terrorism and religious extremism;

Added– having regard to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which stipulates that ‘no one shall be held in slavery or servitude’ and that ‘no one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour’,

Added– having regard to the EU Strategic Framework and Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy of 25 June 2012, which puts the protection and promotion of human rights at the heart of all EU policies,

Added– having regard to the EU Guidelines on the death penalty, on torture and other cruel treatment, on freedom of expression online and offline and on human rights defenders,

Added– having regard to Article 36 of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, which guarantees all citizens the right to freedom of religious belief, and to Article 4 thereof, which upholds the rights of minority ethnicities,

Added– having regard to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 16 December 1966, which China signed in 1998, but which it has never ratified,

Added– having regard to the Protocol of 2014 to the International Labour Organization (ILO) Forced Labour Convention of 1930, which has not been signed by China,

Added– having regard to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights of 2011,

Added– having regard to the reports of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) entitled ‘Uyghurs for sale – “Re-education”, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang’ and ‘Cultural erasure – Tracing the destruction of Uyghur and Islamic spaces in Xinjiang’ published in 2020, as well as its ‘Xinjiang Data Project’,

Added– having regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948,

Added– having regard to Rule 144(5) and 132(4) of its Rules of Procedure,

AddedA. whereas the promotion of and respect for human rights, democracy and the rule of law should remain at the centre of the long-standing relationship between the EU and China, in line with the EU’s commitment to upholding these values in its external action and China’s expressed interest in adhering to them in its own development and international cooperation;

AddedB. whereas the situation in Xinjiang, where more than 10 million Muslim Uyghurs and Kazakhs live, has rapidly deteriorated, particularly since the launch of the Chinese Government’s ‘Strike Hard against Violent Terrorism’ campaign in 2014, and whereas Uyghurs and other primarily Muslim ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have been subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, egregious restrictions on religious practice and culture, and a digitalised surveillance system so pervasive that every aspect of daily life is monitored – through facial recognition cameras, mobile phone scans, the large-scale illegal collection, aggregation and processing of personal data, and an extensive and intrusive police presence; whereas there has been a general strengthening of the Chinese regime and a toughening of the treatment of minorities, in particular of Uyghurs, Tibetans and Mongolians, with the aim of assimilating them through the imposition of the Chinese majority lifestyle and communist ideology; whereas predictive policing platforms such as the Integrated Joint Operation Platform have been extensively used by the police to track suspicious individuals based on everyday, lawful and non-violent behaviour;

AddedC. whereas according to credible reports, more than one million people, are, or have been, detained in what are being called ‘political re-education’ centres, in the largest mass incarceration of an ethnic minority population in the world today; whereas the internment camp system in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is expanding, with more than 380 suspected detention facilities having been newly built or expanded since 2017, and at least 61 detention sites newly constructed or expanded between July 2019 and July 2020;

AddedD. whereas the suffering of the Uyghurs also extends to the younger generation; whereas according to reports, young children have been sent to state-run orphanages even if only one of their parents has been detained in the internment camps; whereas according to research findings, by the end of 2019, over 880 000 Uyghur children had been placed in boarding facilities; whereas credible research shows that the Chinese authorities have implemented an official scheme of targeted birth prevention measures against Uyghur women in an effort to reduce Uyghur birth rates; whereas, as part of this scheme, the Chinese authorities are systematically subjecting Uyghur women of childbearing age to forced abortions, intrauterine injections and sterilisation, with 80 % of all new intrauterine device (IUD) placements in China in 2018 performed in the Uyghur region, despite the fact that it makes up only 1.8 % of China’s population; whereas such measures to prevent births within the Uyghur population could meet the criteria for belonging to the worst crimes against humanity;

AddedE. whereas in August 2018, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination challenged the Government of the People’s Republic of China over abuses in Xinjiang, including the establishment of mass arbitrary detention camps; whereas in September 2018, during her first ever speech in the role, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet noted the ‘deeply disturbing allegations of large-scale arbitrary detentions of Uyghurs and other Muslim communities, in so-called re-education camps across Xinjiang’;

AddedF. whereas the new regulations on religious affairs in China that took effect on 1 February 2018 are more restrictive towards religious groups and activities, and force them to fall more closely into line with party policies; whereas freedom of religion and conscience has reached a new low point since the start of the economic reforms and the opening up of China in the late 1970s; whereas China is home to one of the largest populations of religious prisoners; whereas credible reports have revealed the deliberate and systematic destruction of mosques, churches and other places of worship, mostly since 2017, reducing their numbers to the lowest level since the Cultural Revolution;

AddedG. whereas China has not yet ratified four of the eight ILO Fundamental Conventions, namely Convention no 87 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise, Convention no 98 on the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining, Convention no 29 on Forced Labour and Convention no 105 on the Abolition of Forced Labour; whereas China has ratified Convention no 111 on Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) and Convention no 100 on Equal Remuneration; whereas WTO agreements allow for the adoption of trade measures relating to the products of prison labour;

AddedH. whereas, in parallel to the ‘Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism’, labour transfer programmes have increased since 2014, suggesting they have become a political priority for the Chinese Government as a tool of poverty alleviation in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; whereas there are several credible reports of forced Uyghur labour in production chains in the clothing, technology and automotive sectors, including the March 2020 report of the ASPI, which identified 27 factories in nine Chinese provinces that are using the labour of at least 80 000 Uyghurs transferred from Xinjiang between 2017 and 2019; whereas these factories supply at least 82 global brands, including those owned by many European multinational companies;

AddedI. whereas China is one of the world’s largest cotton producers, with the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region accounting for over 20 % of global cotton production; whereas China is the largest producer and exporter of yarn, and the largest producer and exporter of textiles and apparel; whereas the Chinese Government plans to double manufacturing capacity in the Uyghur Region by 2025, with apparel and textiles forming a key element of that plan; whereas three Uyghur regions alone mobilised at least 570 000 persons into cotton-picking operations through the government’s coercive labour training and transfer scheme in 2018 alone; whereas Xinjiang’s total labour transfer of ethnic minorities into cotton picking likely exceeds that figure by several hundred thousand, making forced labour an intrinsic and generalised characteristic of cotton harvesting in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; whereas 84 % of Chinese cotton comes from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which means that the yarn, textiles and garments made with Chinese cotton are at extraordinarily high risk of being tainted with forced and prison labour, whether manufactured in China or anywhere else in the world;

AddedJ. whereas more than 80 international brand-name corporations have been reported to allegedly profit directly or indirectly from Uyghur forced labour in their supply chains; whereas the current context of oppression prevents independent investigations and audits from being conducted in the Uyghur region;

AddedK. whereas no reliable means are available to companies to verify that any workplace in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is free of forced labour or to prevent the use of forced labour in these workplaces in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and human rights due diligence standards;

AddedL. whereas under the current EU legislation (either at EU or national levels), companies have no legal responsibility to take action to prevent themselves from contributing to human rights abuses in their supply chains; whereas the EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive imposes a reporting obligation on companies, but does not require them to take steps to prevent harm in their supply chains or allows for them to be held accountable;

AddedM. whereas on the occasion of his hearing in its Committee on International Trade, Executive VicePresident Dombrovskis indicated that combating forced labour is a priority for the EU and that, also in the framework of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, EU investment will have to respect the relevant ILO conventions on forced labour;

AddedN. whereas its Committee on Legal Affairs is currently working on an initiative on ‘corporate due diligence and corporate accountability’; whereas the Council published its conclusions on human rights and decent work in global supply chains on 1 December 2020, which call on the Commission to table a proposal for an EU legal framework on sustainable corporate governance, including cross-sector corporate due diligence obligations along global supply chains; whereas the Commission announced that it will put forward a legislative proposal on ‘Sustainable Corporate Governance’ in the second quarter of 2021, which will address the need for human rights due diligence across value chains;

AddedO. whereas the Council has adopted a decision and a regulation establishing the EU global human rights sanction regime which enables the EU to impose restrictive measures on targeted individuals, entities and bodies, including states and non-state actors, responsible for, involved in or associated with serious human rights violations and abuses worldwide, including slavery;

AddedP. whereas the US Congress passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act in 2019; whereas on 22 September 2020, the US House of Representatives adopted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act that imposes various restrictions related to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, including by prohibiting certain imports from Xinjiang and imposing sanctions on the individuals and entities responsible for human rights violations there;