Vince Connelly (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week, I had the humbling and saddening experience of meeting with a delegation of Uighurs. Each person had a shocking and frightening story about how they'd lost contact with their loved ones—parents, wives, husbands—and these loved ones had been detained by the Chinese government and interned in Xinjiang province for having travelled to other countries and so being accused of separatism. In reality, they are an ethnic minority and are being persecuted for being so.

Of the people I met, most had neither heard from nor seen their loved ones in years. One man shared with me that his wife was pregnant when detained in 2017. Chinese authorities have now told him that she has no child with her. Another member of the delegation told me how her husband had been imprisoned for most of the last four years and has now been sentenced to 25 years in prison. In reality, he's a Uighur who once travelled to, and lived for a period in, Turkey. The woman's name is Mehray Mezensof, and she has taken the incredibly brave step of going public with her husband's story. She told me that she'd been quiet for four years, hoping that that would have a positive effect, but it has not.

I have assured the delegation that this Australian government, along with other nations, will continue doing everything we can to hold the Chinese government to account for this brutal injustice.