Interview: Luke de Pulford on U.K. Parliament's genocide resolution

Driving the news: Britain's Parliament passed a motion last Thursday declaring China's campaign of mass detention and forced assimilation in Xinjiang a genocide and calling on the government to take action.

• Britain is now the third country where a parliament has adopted a resolution calling China's repression in Xinjiang a genocide, after Canada and the Netherlands.
• The U.S. State Department has also stated that what's happening in Xinjiang is genocide.

Details: The U.K.’s official position is that a genocide determination must be made by a competent court, which normally means international courts. But it's hard to see a viable route to a court judgment.

• The International Criminal Court route is only viable if the UN Security Council makes a referral (which China will certainly veto, as it is a Security Council member) and the International Court of Justice route isn’t viable because China doesn’t consent to its jurisdiction.

De Pulford serves as coordinator for IPAC, a coalition between lawmakers in democratic countries who are concerned about China's authoritarianism.

What he's saying: “There’s no route to a court. So the U.K.’s policy is inoperable. You can’t say genocide determination is for a court when there’s no court that will ever hear the case.”

• "There can’t be any deepening of the economic relationship between the U.K. and China while the U.K. Parliament suspects that a genocide is taking place," says de Pulford. "You can’t offer economic rewards for genocidal states."