Legislators from the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) have been leading calls for urgent political action in response to evidence suggesting a Chinese Government birth prevention programme in the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region.
The report, authored by IPAC advisor Professor Adrian Zenz and published by the Associated Press, found a sharp fall in birth rates among ethnic minority communities in Xinjiang, corresponding to mass sterilization campaigns and punitive birth control violation sanctions in the area for the same period.
A joint statement signed by IPAC members in response to the revelations gained global attention. The statement called for a UN led legal investigation to determine whether crimes against humanity or genocide had taken place in Xinjiang, as reported in the Guardian and the Washinton Post.
IPAC member Sir Iain Duncan Smith submitted an urgent question to the UK House of Commons, linking the findings of the report to the Chinese Government’s curbing of freedoms in Hong Kong and aggression in border disputes with India, an intervention highlighted by the Hindustan Times.
In Italy, Senators Lucio Malan and Roberto Rampi, also IPAC members, led a crossparty delegation of Italian representatives, as Il Mattino reports, requesting the government denounce and investigate the allegations. Similar concerns were raised in the European Parliament by IPAC member Reinhard Buetikofer, calling on the European Commission to condemn the findings and seek an urgent response, as covered by ADNKronos.
In response to such actions, Britain’s Ambassador to the United Nations led a group of 27 countries including Australia, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, New Zealand and many others from the European Union in requesting that China provide “meaningful and urgent access” to the Xinjiang region. Reuters reported that this was the first statement at the U.N. Human Rights Council on China in four years.
