SEIMAS OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA
RESOLUTION
ON CHINA’S MASS, SYSTEMATIC AND GROSS VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND GENOCIDE AGAINST UYGHURS
20 May 2021 No XIV-329
Vilnius
building on the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Human Rights Declaration of 1948, which establishes the right to life, liberty and security of person and freedom of expression and stresses that no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,
having regard to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment ratified by the People’s Republic of China on 4 October 1988,
building on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights signed by China in 1998 but not ratified yet,
having regard to the 2018 Concluding Observations on the reports of China by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which express concern over the large-scale detention of Uyghurs and members of Muslim and minority communities,
having regard to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, under which the Contracting Parties undertake to prevent and to punish genocide, and building on the definition of genocide given in Article II of the Convention,
having regard to the European Parliament resolution of 18 April 2019 on China, notably the situation of religious and ethnic minorities, the European Parliament resolution of 12 September 2018 on the state of EU-China relations, and the European Parliament resolution of 4 October 2018 on mass arbitrary detention of Uyghurs and Kazakhs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,
having regard to the obligations of China, as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, to ‘uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights’ and to ‘fully cooperate with the Council’,
having regard to the Resolution No XIV-65 of the Seimas of 10 December 2020 on the Long-term Guidelines and Continuity of the Foreign and European Policies of the Republic of Lithuania, which stresses that ‘the area of fundamental values enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, namely respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities, must be expanded both within and beyond the Union’,
stating that the human rights situation in China has been deteriorating since 2012 and the Chinese authorities have detained and have been prosecuting hundreds of human rights defenders, lawyers and journalists; the human rights situation in Xinjiang, where more than 15 million Muslim Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs live, has rapidly deteriorated; an extrajudicial detention programme has been established in China for arbitrarily detaining over a million of Uyghurs who are being forced to undergo political re-education, without being charged or tried, under the pretext of countering terrorism, separatism and religious extremism; they are exposed to torture and ill-treatment; a policy of strict restrictions on religious practices and the Uyghur language and customs has been developed in the Xinjiang province; children separated from their families have been placed in state-run orphanages and boarding schools; numerous cultural and religious sites have been destroyed; moreover, a network of invasive digital surveillance has been developed, including facial recognition technology and data collection,
in response to the recent report produced by the British public broadcaster BBC on 3 February 2021 which revealed large-scale gang rape, rape with electrified sticks, serious injuries, use of torture rooms, sterilisation and starvation of detainees in Xinjiang’s ‘re-education’ camps,
in response to the report by the Global Policy Centre published on 15 December 2020 on the exploitation of over 570,000 Uyghurs by forcing them to work in cotton fields and the report by Jamestown Foundation (United States of America) of 29 June 2020 (updated on 21 July 2020) on measures to suppress Uyghur birth-rates, including mandatory long-term birth control and sterilization of Uyghur women, which resulted in a drop of Uyghur birth-rates by 84% between 2015 and 2018 and their further decline,
in response to the testimonies before the Canadian Parliament on 21 November 2009, 6 December 2012, and 2 December 2013 on the large-scale organ harvesting carried out on unwilling practitioners of the spiritual Falun Gong movement in China since 2000,
emphasising that China’s decision to introduce a new national security law for Hong Kong is in direct conflict with China’s international obligations under the principles of the legally binding Sino-British Joint Declaration, registered with the United Nations Organisation, and undermines its ‘One Country, Two Systems’ principle,
stating that the new national security law provides for the possibility to prosecute the Hong Kong population for political offences and contradicts the commitments enshrined in the Hong Kong Basic Law to protect the rights of the Hong Kong people in accordance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,
in response to well-documented state-commissioned practice of forced labour in violation of International Labour Organisation standards and utilisation of forced labour in the international market,
in response to repeated reports of human rights violations in Hong Kong and Tibet,
strongly condemns the mass, systematic and grave violations of human rights and crimes against humanity committed by China;
stresses that the harvesting of the organs from non-consenting political prisoners and prisoners of conscience and their potential killing in China for the purpose of selling their organs are intolerable crimes against humanity;
states that pursuant to Article II(b) and (d) of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, China is currently committing genocide against Uyghurs;
calls on the United Nations to launch a legal investigation into the Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang internment camps;
invites the European Parliament, the European Commission and its President, Ursula von der Leyen, to review the European Union policy on cooperation with China and to formulate a clear position on China’s mass, systematic and grave violations of human rights, crimes against humanity and the Uyghur genocide;
calls on the Chinese authorities to put an immediate end to the illegal practice of organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, release all prisoners of conscience in China, including practitioners of the spiritual Falun Gong movement, stop the genocide against Uyghurs and close the ‘re-education’ camps, release all detainees and prisoners currently held in detention and forced labour camps; also to revoke the national security law for Hong Kong, withdraw its forces from Hong Kong and put an end to the restrictions on freedom of expression and political rights and allow access for independent human rights experts to Tibetan areas and open a dialogue with Dalai Lama on the preservation of cultural and religious heritage and the restoration of religious freedom of Tibet.