France’s parliament on Thursday denounced a “genocide” by China against its Uyghur Muslim population, in a resolution that risks straining ties between Paris and Beijing two weeks before the Winter Olympics.
The non-binding resolution, adopted with 169 votes in favour and just one against, was proposed by the opposition Socialists in the lower house of parliament but also backed by President Emmanuel Macron’s Republic on the Move (LREM) party.
It reads that the National Assembly “officially recognises the violence perpetrated by the People’s Republic of China against the Uyghurs as constituting crimes against humanity and genocide”.
It also calls on the French government to undertake “the necessary measures within the international community and in its foreign policy towards the People’s Republic of China” to protect the minority group in the Xinjiang region.
“China is a great power. We love the Chinese people. But we refuse to submit to propaganda from a regime that is banking on our cowardice and our avarice to perpetrate a genocide in plain sight,” Socialist party chief Olivier Faure said.
He recounted testimony to parliament from Uyghur survivors who told of conditions inside internment camps where men and women were unable to lie down in cells, subjected to rape and torture, as well as forced organ transplants.
French MPs were also called to applaud Uyghurs refugees who had been invited to observe the parliamentary session.
The resolution follows a similar move in Britain in April last year which led to condemnation from China.
The Netherlands and Canadian parliaments both called Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs “genocide” in February 2021, while the US government also called it genocide under former president Donald Trump.
United States, Britain, Australia and Canada have announced diplomatic boycotts of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which start on February 4.
China denies genocide or the existence of forced labour camps in Xinjiang and has accused Uyghurs testifying overseas about conditions inside the northwestern region of being paid liars.
The French parliamentary resolution comes at a time when the European Union is weighing how to respond to a Chinese blockade of Lithuania’s exports, as well as Beijing’s crushing of democratic freedoms in Hong Kong.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who has sought to avoid being dragged into increasingly confrontational ties between China and the United States, was asked about the Uyghurs during an appearance before the European parliament on Wednesday.
“You were right to remind us of massacres, massive deportations and forced labour,” he told campaigning MEP Raphael Glucksmann.
“France raises this in a very clear fashion in all of our bilateral talks (with Beijing).”
He said he was in favour of an EU regulation that would “ban the import of goods that result from forced labour.”
Speaking in parliament on Thursday to represent the government, Trade Minister Franck Riester referred to “systematic violence” and “overwhelming testimonies” from Uyghurs, but said that terming their treatment genocide was a formal decision taken by international institutions.
Beijing has turned down repeated requests from the UN High Commission for Human Rights to visit the region to investigate.
Human rights groups say they have found evidence of mass detentions, forced labour, political indoctrination, torture and forced sterilisation in Xinjiang.
After initially denying the existence of the Xinjiang camps, China later defended them as vocational training centres aimed at reducing the appeal of Islamic extremism.
The United States has slapped sanctions on a growing list of Chinese politicians and companies over the treatment of the Uyghurs, leading to tit-for-tat measures from Beijing.
China has also sanctioned European, British and US lawmakers, as well as academics who study Xinjiang and a London law firm.
The only French MP to vote against Thursday’s resolution was Buon Tan from Macron’s LREM, the chairman of a Franco-Chinese “friendship group”.
