Sam Brownback: Former US envoy lauds Dutch Parliament designation of Chinese treatment of Uyghurs as ‘genocide’ | World News

WASHINGTON: Former United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback on Friday lauded the Dutch Parliament’s decision to declare the atrocities faced by the Uyghur community in Xinjiang as genocide.
In a tweet, the former US representative urged other European Union member countries to “follow their example”.
“The Dutch Parliament has taken an important step designating the actions of the Chinese Communist Party against Uyghur Muslims as a genocide. Other EU members should follow their example,” Brownback wrote in a tweet.
The Netherlands Parliament on Thursday passed a motion saying the Chinese treatment of the Uyghur minority is a “genocide”.
The Netherlands becomes the first European country to take such a move.
The motion, which is nonbinding, could encourage other European parliaments to advance similar statements.
Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
The move comes a week after outgoing Foreign Minister Stef Blok said the Dutch government wasn’t ready to declare the situation in the northwestern region of Xinjiang a genocide. Instead, he said, the situation was “large-scale human rights violations against Uyghurs.”
On Monday, Canada’s House of Commons has voted overwhelmingly to declare China’s treatment of its Uyghur minority population a genocide.
The motion – which passed 266 to 0 – was supported by all opposition parties and a handful of lawmakers from the governing Liberal Party.
In the US, the previous Trump administration determined that China has committed genocide against Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang and said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) must be held accountable for its acts against humanity.
China has been rebuked globally for cracking down on Uyghur Muslims by sending them to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious activities and sending members of the community to undergo some form of forcible re-education or indoctrination.
Beijing, on the other hand, has vehemently denied that it is engaged in human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang while reports from journalists, NGOs and former detainees have surfaced, highlighting the Chinese Communist Party’s brutal crackdown on the ethnic community,
Recently, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called on China to allow independent rights observers “meaningful access” into the Xinjiang province to probe abuses.