You may remember when we announced that – together with our friends at Labour Movement Solidarity with Hong Kong (UK) – we had written a motion for the September 2021 Labour Party conference. Now, parts of this motion are on their way to be debated and voted on at the conference – but we need your help to get the full proposals there.
We’re pleased to say that Finchley & Golders Green CLP (Constituency Labour Party) has voted to send a motion to the conference that includes elements of our proposal – thanks FGG Labour! You can read the text below. If you’re in Labour, please ask your conference delegates to support it!
But parts of our proposal didn’t make it into this motion – in particular, the call for action against the big businesses profiting from the repression of the Uyghur people. We want strict laws requiring big businesses to transparently audit their supply chains worldwide for links to human rights abuses, and we want Labour to actively support protests and worker action against complicit businesses.
If another local CLP passes the full text of our motion and sends it to the conference, it can be combined (“composited”) at the conference with the text from Finchley & Golders Green. So – if you’re a Labour member and your local CLP hasn’t yet decided what to send to the conference, please propose that it sends our motion! Find the motion text here, and get in touch via info@uyghursolidarityuk.org – we can offer advice on how to propose it and get it through.
Finally: we’re a cross-party left-wing campaign, so we’d also like to hear from supporters in other parties – could you get a similar motion through your party’s conference?
Motion sent to Labour Party conference by Finchley & Golders Green CLP (Expand)
Solidarity with the Uyghurs
Conference notes:
- The Chinese state is inflicting industrial-scale racist oppression on the Uyghur people along with other ethnic and national minorities in north-west China. The Uyghurs are majority-Muslim and the largest national group in the province officially called “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region”, known to Uyghurs as East Turkestan.
- As documented by many human rights groups, the repression includes arbitrary mass internment and indoctrination of at least a million people in concentration camps; extreme, intrusive, suffocating mass surveillance; draconian restrictions on cultural, linguistic and religious freedom, including virtually banning Muslim religious practice; forced labour in global corporate supply chains; and the systematic separation of Uyghur children from their families.
- The Chinese government is crushing dissent and national self-assertion by the Uyghurs, atomising and dispersing them, undermining their collective identity and continuity as a people.
- The violent crackdown against Hong Kong’s democracy movement. Independent trade unions, while growing, face attacks facilitated by British colonial-era anti-union and anti-democratic laws.
Conference resolves that Labour will:
- Support and promote campaigning action in solidarity with: Uyghurs, supporting their freedom, human rights and self-determination; and with independent labour and democratic movements, protests and strikes in China;
- Support universal suffrage for Hong Kong, releasing political prisoners and repealing the National Security Law;
- Resist this cause being hijacked by nationalists and hawkish politicians promoting anti-Chinese racism, superpower rivalry, trade wars and militarisation;
- Welcome unconditionally all who seek refuge here from tyranny and persecution.
Model motion for your local Labour Party to pass and send to party conference (Expand)
China, Hong Kong and the Uyghurs: solidarity, peace, democracy, liberation
Labour believes socialism means political and economic democracy. Despite pretences, China’s authoritarian state represents neither.
Uyghurs and other majority-Muslim peoples in Xinjiang/ East Turkestan suffer genocidal persecution including racist surveillance; political, cultural and religious repression; forced contraception and sterilisation; forced labour in global corporate supply chains; children removed from families; and concentration camps.
A violent, corporate-backed crackdown has attacked Hong Kong’s movement for democracy and civil liberties. Independent unions are surging but under assault. British colonial-era anti-union and anti-democratic laws facilitate this.
Throughout China, worker exploitation is rampant. Wealth inequality approaches US levels. Independent unions and protests are suppressed while corporations and state bureaucrats profit. But workers, women, minorities and dissidents continue to resist.
In all levels of government and grassroots campaigning, Labour will:
- Build solidarity with independent labour, democratic and liberatory movements, protests and strikes in China;
- Resist hijacking of this cause by nationalists and hawks promoting anti-Chinese racism, superpower rivalry, trade wars and militarisation;
- Support freedom and human rights for the indigenous peoples of Xinjiang/ East Turkestan and Tibet, and their right to democratically determine their futures;
- Support universal suffrage for Hong Kong, release of political prisoners and repeal of the National Security Law;
- Propose Magnitsky sanctions against officials involved in these abuses;
- Support protests and worker action against businesses complicit in these abuses;
- Propose laws requiring big businesses to transparently audit supply chains to source worldwide, and cut ties to rights abuses;
- Welcome unconditionally all refugees who seek sanctuary here from tyranny and persecution.
Uyghur Solidarity UK 