Harborough MP calls on UK to become less reliant on China now the country’s brutal ‘re-education’ camps have been exposed

Up to a million innocent Uighur Muslim people have been locked up in the hardline detention centres in Xinjiang province
Harborough MP Neil O’Brien is calling on the UK to become less reliant on China now as the totalitarian country’s brutal ‘re-education’ camps have been exposed.Harborough MP Neil O’Brien is calling on the UK to become less reliant on China now as the totalitarian country’s brutal ‘re-education’ camps have been exposed.
Harborough MP Neil O’Brien is calling on the UK to become less reliant on China now as the totalitarian country’s brutal ‘re-education’ camps have been exposed.

Harborough MP Neil O’Brien is calling on the UK to become less reliant on China now as the totalitarian country’s brutal ‘re-education’ camps have been exposed.

The Conservative MP is issuing his call today as he warned that up to a million innocent Uighur Muslim people have been locked up in the hardline detention centres in Xinjiang province.

Mr O’Brien is speaking out after startling new pictures and documents that have made headlines around the world show the horrific conditions that the persecuted Uighur minority face in the camps.

A rich seam of leaked data, hacked from the authorities, lays bare a shocking shoot-to-kill rule for anyone trying to escape as sickening images appear to show shackled prisoners being tortured.

The stunning new global expose also warns that thousands of Uighurs have been jailed for many years after being detained on trumped-up ‘terrorism’ charges.

Outraged Mr O’Brien told the Harborough Mail: "The Russian invasion of Ukraine shows the danger of replying on dictatorships which abuse the basic human rights of their own citizens.

“It is risky to rely on ruthless dictators for anything we need.

"Despite the fact that journalists are banned from Xinjiang, more and more images are leaking out of the concentration camps there.

“The mass forced sterilisation of Uighur women and the evidence that up to a million people have been imprisoned in the camps are showing the world exactly what the Chinese regime is like,” said the MP, a leading critic of the communist giant.

"We need to reduce our dependence on China for both economic and ethical reasons.

“Since President Xi took office 10 years ago China has stopped coming towards the democratic world and instead gone in an increasingly dictatorial and nationalistic direction,” warned Mr O’Brien, who helped set up the Parliamentary China Research Group in 2020.

“Until and unless there is a change of direction in China we need to be working relentlessly to reduce our dependence on the Chinese regime for anything.”

The Harborough MP was one of a handful of MPs to be banned from visiting China in March 2021 before also being sanctioned by Russia earlier this month following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.