Newcastle severs ties with Chinese city over treatment of Uyghur Muslims

City leaders in Newcastle, United Kingdom, have decided to sever relationship with Taiyuan, Chinese city of Shanxi Province, over the Chinese Communist regime’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims.

Councillors agreed to the move on Wednesday night after being urged by the student-led Newcastle Stands with Hong Kong (NSWHK) group to terminate the agreement, as part of a Global Detwin with China campaign.

Liberal Democrat representative Wendy Taylor told a council meeting that at least a million Uyghurs have been forcibly detained in so-called “re-education” camps in China and that survivors have reported incidents of rape, torture, and forced sterilisation, while evidence of organ harvesting has also been presented to the United Nations.

A Newcastle University academic, Dr Jo Smith Finley, was sanctioned by China last year for her research and activism on the Uyghur Muslims. She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that ending the sister city agreement “sends a clear signal that we are no longer willing to tolerate a cultural exchange relationship with a country that refuses to even discuss human rights issues”.

Ahead of Wednesday night’s meeting, NSWHK members gathered outside the civic centre to urge councillors to back the motion One campaigner told the LDRS that Newcastle had to “take a moral stand” against the Chinese government

Taiyuan, an industrial city in northern China and the capital of Shanxi province, has been twinned with Newcastle since 1985 and has sent delegations to Tyneside on several occasions. The Liberal Democrat motion, amended by the city’s ruling Labour group, to end the sister city agreement was passed unanimously.