Most of the Belgian deputies voted, Thursday evening, in favor of a text warning of a “serious danger of genocide” threatening the Muslim Uyghur minority in China, joining a similar position expressed by the US government and a number of Western parliaments.
The document was penned by pro-environmental MP Samuel Cogolatti, who considered it “historic”.
The text was adopted by a majority of 125 votes and no one opposed it, while the 12 Communist MPs belonging to the Belgian Labor Party abstained from voting in favor of Uyghur Muslims.
The vote, which took place during a plenary session, came to confirm a vote conducted on June 15 by the Parliamentary Committee in charge of Foreign Relations of Belgium, which at the time drew condemnation from China. The Chinese government does not recognize the state-sponsored human rights violation of Uyghur Muslims in their country.
“We call on Belgium to correct its mistake immediately,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters.
With this vote, Belgium becomes the sixth country whose parliament has denounced the abuse of the Uyghur Muslim minority in Xinjiang.
“This is a historic vote. This is the first time that the Belgian parliament has learned lessons from the massacres of Srebrenica and Rwanda and acted before it is too late,” Kogolati told AFP after this voting in favor of Uyghurs in China.
