George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The road to Auschwitz was paved with indifference, and if we remain indifferent to the Chinese Communist Party's treatment of ethnic and religious groups we will forever wear the shame of having stood by and watched when we could have acted. China's systematic genocide of Uighurs in East Turkestan cannot be ignored. It doesn't matter where you sit on the political spectrum; the acts perpetuated by the Chinese Communist Party against this group of people are objectively evil.

I note that the Chinese Communist Party and its regime have strongly denied the reports of these re-education camps, and said that they're anything but facilities to educate minorities on Chinese culture. China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, called reports of Uighur genocide 'rumour with ulterior motives and a complete lie'. I'm sure he missed the irony of his own words! There has been a rapid increase in the number and scale of these camps in the last five to 10 years amid claims that President Xi Jinping of China is ramping up the CCP's agenda against religious and ethnic minorities. The Chinese government's own statistics show that birth rates in the mostly Uighur regions of Hotan and Kashgar plunged by more than 60 per cent from 2015 to 2018.

We know from various sources, including those who have been imprisoned in those camps, that horrendous atrocities are taking place. Uighurs are being displaced, imprisoned, indoctrinated, forced into labour, tortured, raped, sterilised and used for medical experiments, and are even having their organs harvested. This is genocide by definition—by the UN's own definition, in fact. On that note, if you ever feel useless in life remember that there's a thing called the United Nations. What these guys are actually for, if not to hold countries to account on human rights abuses, is anyone's guess, because the human rights record of the CCP is absolutely shocking and the UN is doing nothing. The fact that this country is peppered with statues and portraits of Mao Zedong, who was responsible for the deaths of 50 million of his own people, indicates that that record isn't going to improve if the CCP are left to their own devices. Although the Uighurs are bearing the brunt of the Chinese Communist Party's disdain for ethnic minorities, the persecution also extends to anyone who believes in a higher power than the state in China.

For decades, Christians in China have had to form underground churches to avoid persecution from the CCP. It was reported last year that the CCP was rolling out a policy of withdrawing government welfare from Christians unless they renounced their faith. In April 2020, all the officials from a town in the northern province of Jiangxi were ordered to remove crosses and other Christian items from the homes of Christian recipients of benefit payments and replace them with portraits of President Xi Jinping and Chairman Mao Zedong. Christians who objected had their payments stopped.

A Christian in a Jiangxi village had Christian verses and a Christian calendar torn from their wall and replaced with a portrait by Mao by an official, who declared: 'Impoverished religious households can't receive money from the state for nothing. They must obey the Communist Party for the money they receive.' A woman in her 80s, who attends a state registered church in Jiangxi's Poyang County, stopped receiving her monthly welfare payment because she said, 'Thank God,' when she collected her January payment. 'They expected me to praise the kindness of the Communist Party instead,' she said. There are endless accounts of crosses being removed and replaced with images of Mao Zedong or Xi Jinping, of welfare payments being cancelled and of workers being demoted, harassed and receiving pay cuts.

I could talk about Falun Dafa petitioners who have experienced severe persecution since 1999, when a rapid rise in its popularity prompted the CCP to ban anyone from practising it. In 1995 we know that the 11th Panchen Lama, who was six years old at the time, was kidnapped, along with his entire family, allegedly by CCP operators. Neither the Panchen Lama nor his family have been seen since.

It is reported that the Chinese government has put Christians, Tibetans, Falun Dafa, Muslims, the Uighurs—you name the religion—into camps, tortured them and killed them. What can we do? The UN won't do anything. The CCP's actions are only getting worse. The CCP is guilty of crimes against humanity. The CCP is guilty of genocide. The CCP is now no better than, and should be considered, a transnational criminal organisation. We can't remain indifferent. We must keep talking about this. We must call the CCP out. We must unite across the political divide to condemn these horrid atrocities.

See this speech in context