The Chinese Embassy in Wellington responded on Thursday morning, saying the Parliament had interfered in China s internal affairs, something it firmly opposes . Beijing has always denied abuses are happening in Xinjiang, counter to numerous independent reports and testimonials from people who have escaped the region. Using Xinjiang-related issues to pressure China will go nowhere but to harm the mutual trust between China and NZ, the embassy spokesperson said. We urge the New Zealand side to respect truth and facts, stop the erroneous practices immediately and uphold China-New Zealand relations through concrete actions. We hope the NZ Parliament will do more to strengthen the friendship and cooperation between our two countries and people, not the other way around.
The New Zealand Parliament unanimously passed a motion that called the treatment of Uygurs in China’s Xinjiang region “severe human rights abuses”, which was watered down from a previous version that included the term “genocide”.
Brought by the opposition Act party, the motion could not have been debated in Parliament without the support of the ruling Labour Party, which objected to the term “genocide”.
“Unfortunately, we are only having half this debate, this is not the debate that I proposed to Parliament last week. I . had to dilute it and soften it to gain the approval of New Zealand’s governing party,” said Brooke van Velden, deputy leader of the Act party, in a parliamentary debate on Wednesday.