HOLMES Chapel MP Fiona Bruce has expressed her concerns about the government’s decision to allow Huawei a role in the UK's 5G networks.

She said: “There are serious concerns about threats to our national security, personal privacy and freedoms in this country.

“There is also the grave threat of undermining our intelligence relationships with some of our oldest and closest allies, particularly the United States, Australia and Canada.

“As Chair of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, I have been deeply concerned about the severe crackdown on human rights in China in recent years, said by many to be the worst since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and in some respects since the Cultural Revolution.

“Four years ago I chaired an in-depth inquiry by the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission which resulted in a detailed report titled ‘The Darkest Moment’.

“Since then we have issued further reports expressing concerns about the alleged mass forced organ removal of prisoners of conscience in Chinese prisons (resulting in their death), a report on Confucius Institutes.

“In the coming weeks I will be chairing a new Inquiry to look at the human rights situation in China since 2016. It has not improved, and Huawei is part of this picture.

“According to research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), Huawei is openly collaborating with the Public Security Bureau to construct a surveillance state in Xinjiang and roll it out throughout China.

The Uyghur population face constant surveillance. Government officials are being placed in Uyghur homes to monitor their behaviour around the clock.

“There are cameras on every corner, and checkpoints on every block. Mobile phones are monitored and any applications that appear suspicious result in immediate arrest.

“So many people have been arrested that whole villages are deserted; their children placed in Children’s homes.

“Huawei in so far as its technology is being used to facilitate this surveillance is, therefore, complicit in the persecution of the Uyghurs.

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“It is estimated that at least one million Uyghurs – and this has been well reported on by the BBC - and other ethnic groups, are currently forcibly incarcerated in what are called ‘re-education camps’ - in other words, concentration camps, in what has been called 'the largest incarceration of an ethno-religious minority since the Holocaust'.

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“Huawei’s technological involvement in this is deeply concerning – and it is therefore both on a security level, and on a human rights basis, justifiable that I and other colleagues in Parliament should be expressing the gravest concerns about the Government’s decision to allow Huawei into our telecommunications infrastructure and are seeking to limit this.”