Huawei’s Human Rights Record Has Been Shamefully Ignored

To mark Holocaust Day last week, I read Corrie Ten Boom’s memoir The Hiding Place. After sheltering Jews from the Nazi regime, Ms. Ten Boom was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp. She describes in the book her experience of doing forced labor for Siemens in the camps. The Holocaust saw state-sponsored mass enslavement on an appalling scale.

Her plight reminded me of the situation in the Xinjiang region in western China. Around 1 million Uyghur Muslims have been incarcerated and forced to work for nothing. Academics describe it as the world’s worst incident of state-sanctioned slavery.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave rousing speeches on Holocaust Memorial Day, saying “never again.” The U.K. government has admirably expressed its ambition to “lead the world” in its anti-slavery commitment. But the next day, the U.K. National Security Council committed to sign over up to 35 percent of our 5G infrastructure to Huawei, a company that the government knows actively partners with the Xinjiang government to make the world’s most dystopian system of governance possible.

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