| UPDATED: 08:00, Tue, Jan 12, 2021
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Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and a former army officer, explained how British troops used a version of the track and trace while hunting insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq. Describing himself as a big fan of military planning, the Conservative MP argued that in principle the army could apply the same tactics used in warzones to police the spread of the coronavirus hotspots in the UK.
UK Government bought £150m of PPE from Chinese firms linked to Uighur human rights abuses
Two of the firms are linked to an organisation under US embargo for human rights abuses in the cotton industry.
7 January 2021 • 8:00pm
Ministers handed almost £150m to Chinese firms with links to alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang amid a race for PPE after Covid hit.
The Health Department paid £122m to Winner Medical, which uses cotton produced by a supplier that works in the controversial region and has ties to a paramilitary group accused by the US of using forced labour.
Another £19m contract went to pharmaceutical firm China Meheco and £16.5m was paid to Sinopharm, both of which have been linked to labour programmes in the province.
(FILES) This file photo taken on June 4, 2019 shows the Jieleixi No.13 village mosque in Yangisar, south of Kashgar, in China’s western Xinjiang region. – Chinese authorities have demolished thousands of mosques in Xinjiang, an Australian think tank said on September 25, 2020, in the latest report of widespread human rights abuses in the restive region. (Photo by GREG BAKER / AFP)
France has become the first country to oppose the proposed Comprehensive Agreement on Investment deal to be signed between the European Union and China. In an interview to Le Monde, Franck Riester, Minister delegate for foreign trade said his country would oppose the deal with China over the use of forced Uyghur labour by China. While acknowledging that the proposed investment pact would be significant in re-balancing investment with China, he said France continued to have concerns that China had not fulfilled “sufficient commitments” to international treaties. The CAI received an “in principle n
Русский
The Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing framework comprising Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, has become something of a household name in Japan of late. The surge in interest can be traced to remarks by certain Japanese officials and pundits promoting the idea of Japan’s participation in this exclusive club of core Anglosphere states.
The Five Eyes grew out of signals-intelligence cooperation between the United States and Britain during World War II. In recent years, the focus of the Five Eyes’ intelligence-gathering efforts has shifted to the Internet and other digital communications. At the same time, the five-nation group has expanded its activities and it increasingly acts as a forum for policy consultation and coordination on a range of high-tech and security matters, particularly regarding China. This shift in orientation helps explain the Five Eyes’ interest in cooperation with Japan, and it also points to the strategic impl
AFP
A group of lawmakers in the U.K. called on the government Wednesday to “act urgently” in holding Chinese officials accountable for rights abuses against minorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
In a statement, the U.K. branch of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) submitted evidence it said should encourage the government to act against Chinese officials deemed complicit in repression in the XUAR, where authorities are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a vast network of internment camps since early 2017.
Composed of 46 parliamentarians from both Houses of Parliament, with representation from all major political parties, IPAC U.K. called for government support for the opening of an investigation by The Hague-based International Criminal Court into “crimes committed by Chinese officials.”