AN OPEN LETTER TO NEW PRIME MINISTER RISHI SUNAK
Dear Prime Minister,
As you take office as the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, I congratulate you and wish you every success. As you know more than most, these are exceptionally challenging times and the task you face is an extraordinarily difficult one. Our country needs to come together to support you and to support each other.
I also congratulate you on becoming the first Prime Minister of our country who is of Asian heritage, the first person of colour to hold this highest office in government, and the first Hindu, and you are taking office just as the Diwali celebrations conclude, which seems remarkably apposite.
Among the myriad challenges in your inbox is one which I hope you will confront urgently, and send a clear, unambiguous message from the outset: the severe and growing threats which the Chinese Communist Party regime poses to freedom, not only for the diverse peoples of China but to the international rules-based order and our own liberties and way of life. We saw this most explicitly in the behaviour of the Chinese Consul-General and his staff in Manchester last week, when they beat up peaceful Hong Kong protesters, including dragging one, Mr Bob Chan, into the grounds of the consulate for a severe assault. We saw it also in the extraordinary removal of China’s former President Hu Jintao in dramatic scenes at the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Congress this past weekend. But we see it too in the dismantling of Hong Kong’s freedoms, the genocide of the Uyghurs, the continued atrocities in Tibet, the persecution of Christians and Falun Gong practitioners, forced organ harvesting, the crackdown on all forms of dissent, civil society, independent media and lawyers defending human rights across China, and the increasing threats to Taiwan. And we see it in the insidious influence of the Chinese Communist Party in our universities – something you yourself have noted with regard to the role of the Confucius Institutes – and the harassment of critics of the regime in Beijing well beyond China’s borders. I myself, along with many colleagues and friends, have been subjected to this first-hand.
Today, as you take office, I am launching a new book which details all these and other crimes by the Chinese regime. The launch of my book is hosted by Lord Alton of Liverpool and will be addressed by, among others, Baroness Helena Kennedy, KC, two leading figures in British public life who have both been sanctioned by Beijing. I would be delighted to extend an invitation to you to attend this book launch, but of course I know you will have other important issues to attend to. But I do hope you will read this book, and much more importantly reflect seriously on the issues it presents.
As you begin your term as Prime Minister, I urge you to do six things:
· Conduct a cross-departmental, comprehensive review of our China policy, and to ensure that we stand up to any initiatives by the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate, influence or intimidate any of our key sectors and policy-making processes;
· Introduce a total, complete and wholesale ban on the import of any products made by forced labour in China, and a new process to diversify our supply chains;
· Impose targeted sanctions on those responsible for dismantling and destroying Hong Kong’s promised freedoms, the rule of law and autonomy, for they must not be allowed to get away with what they have done with impunity, with no consequences;
· Expel the Consul-General and his colleagues responsible for the violence in Manchester last week with immediate effect, and follow through on your own pledges to tackle Confucius Institutes;
· Provide a clear indication that you would be willing to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and that you will stand by Taiwan.
· Work with other leaders of the democratic world to coordinate a response to the threat that the Chinese Communist Party regime poses, that includes sanctions, a robust defence of our freedoms and the promotion of human rights for the peoples of China and beyond.
I hope that amongst the wide range of reading material in your inbox in the coming weeks, my book – The China Nexus: Thirty Years In and Around the Chinese Communist Party’s Tyranny – might find its way to you, and that you will take these profoundly serious issues into account as you begin to shape our government’s response to the many challenges we face today.
I wish you every success. I want you to succeed. Above all, I want you to succeed for Britain, and in defence of human rights, human dignity, human freedom and the international rules-based order.
Yours sincerely,
