French Parliament slammed China's "genocide" of its Uyghur Muslim people on Thursday, in a resolution that could sour relations between Paris and Beijing only two weeks before the Winter Olympics.
It also urges the French government to protect the ethnic minority in the Xinjiang region and take "the necessary measures within the international community and in its foreign policy towards the People's Republic of China".
The non-binding resolution, adopted with 169 votes in favour and just one against, was proposed by the opposition Socialists in the Lower House of Parliament.
Nonetheless, the resolution is also backed by President Emmanuel Macron's Republic on the Move (LREM) party, reported Barron's.
As per the adopted resolution, the National Assembly "officially recognises the violence perpetrated by the People's Republic of China against the Uyghurs as constituting crimes against humanity and genocide".
"China is a great power. We love the Chinese people. But we refuse to submit to propaganda from a regime that is banking on our cowardice and our avarice to perpetrate genocide in plain sight," Socialist party chief Olivier Faure said.
He told lawmakers of conditions within internment camps where men and women were unable to lie down in cells, were exposed to rape and torture, and were forced to undergo organ transplants, reported the newspaper.
Similar resolutions were passed by parliaments in Britain, Canada, and the Netherlands last year, and the US government has also condemned what it deems genocide in Xinjiang.
( With inputs from ANI )
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