Legal threat over Boris 5G deal

Published by The Mail on Sunday ((17th May, 2020)

The Government is facing legal action over its controversial deal to allow Huawei to play a role in building Britain’s 5G network.

Human rights activists say they will seek a judicial review to stop Boris Johnson going ahead with the plan because they claim the firm is linked to concentration camps, slavery and repression of minorities.

This week lawyers for two British-based Uighur activists will send a letter warning of court action if the PM presses on with his plan – on the grounds it flouts European procurement and British human rights rules.

The Government is facing legal action from human rights activists over its controversial deal to allow Huawei to play a role in building Britain’s 5G network.

Up to three million members of Uighur and other Muslim minorities in the west of China have been sent to barbaric forced re-education centres as part of a drive to crush their cultures.

Torture is routine and children have been taken from families. Millions more in Xinjiang province are controlled day and night by surveillance systems that use face and voice recognition technology.

‘It is a betrayal of British values to deal with this firm,’ said Rahima Mahmut, a London-based activist with the World Uighur Congress.

They claim the firm is linked to concentration camps, slavery and repression of minorities. ‘Huawei played a key role in creating this horrific Orwellian system and people are suffering.’

Huawei was named earlier this year in a report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute that identified 83 leading global brands linked to 27 factories across China using Uighur workers transferred from concentration camps.

Huawei declined to comment. One source at the company insisted it complied with all laws on modern slavery and denied it was ‘intricately or intimately’ involved with any repression in Xinjiang.

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