超精彩！英國上議院議員Lord Alton: 跟中國人民站在一起 堅決抵制中共暴政直到最後 | #紀元英國 #EpochNewsUK

It's a great pleasure to be with you but especially you've managed not just to unite people from different political parties but Manchester and Liverpool. Liverpool of course is the centre of the universe and it's a great pleasure to be with Asphalt but also with Ed and with my great friend Nuz Nuzgani who's going to speak to you next and as you've just been told I mean Nuz and I have a badge of honour. We have a badge of honour in that we have been sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party who want to silence us and the fact we're gathered here at Piccadilly Circus makes it clear we're not going to be silenced by anyone. I've just come straight from Parliament where we've had a debate this afternoon about the growth of authoritarian regimes and on our minds and in our hearts of course are all the threats of bullying and the things that have been done by the CCP. I've got just three things I want to say to you this evening. The first is about the Olympic spirit, the second is about the malign oppression of the CCP and the third is about why we all of us who have these privileges and liberties must be a light in a dark world. The Olympic spirit friends, the Olympic flame which inaugurates the Olympic Games has its origins in ancient Greece where a sacred fire was kept burning throughout the games. Greece too was the cradle of course of democracy. Keep those two thoughts in mind in considering the appalling degradation of the Olympic spirit and the ideals of democracy by staging the Olympic Games in Beijing, a state which is responsible for genocide even according to our Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Elizabeth Truss. Genocide is the crime above all crimes. There will be no place at the Olympic Games for the Uyghurs. There will be no Olympic fire burning for the Uyghurs nor for the people of Tibet. There'll be no light of the Olympic flame, not for Hong Kong the light of the Olympic flame, not for Taiwan the light of the Olympic flame, not for Falun Gong or religious believers, dissenters, lawyers, journalists the light of the Olympic flame, not since 1936 when the Nazi games were held in Berlin when the world saw Hitler use the Olympics to promote his hideous ideology with most Jewish German athletes barred from taking part in the Olympic ideals, not since then have we seen this game so debased and to those companies, to those companies who have sponsored these Beijing Olympics we should say shame on you. Secondly let me emphasize the malign nature of the CCP. I was one of the international team which monitored the last three elections in the wonderful city of Hong Kong. Since then we've seen the CCP snuff out the flame of freedom incarcerating and intimidating anyone who dares to challenge their hegemony. We've seen the rule of law subverted and we've seen the sham of kangaroo courts subverting justice and we've seen British judges willing to give kangaroo courts and a corrupted system the veneer of respectability. Shame on those judges! Or take Xinjiang where the independent Uyghur tribunal has shone a light on genocide and crimes against humanity and I pay great tribute to Sir Geoffrey Nice QC who chaired that tribunal. Take Tibet where I visited and where there is a culture of people who have been driven to the edge of extinction. Shame on the CCP for doing that! Take brave brave individuals like Shan Zheng who is incarcerated for questioning the origins of Covid-19 in Wuhan. Its malign oppression of its own people is reflected in the subversion of the United Nations and its institutions and indeed in the infiltration of our own British universities and even our British parliament. Shame on them! My third and final point concerns you and me. What we must do. I began talking about the Olympic flame with our privileges with our freedoms and liberties. We must keep alight the flame of freedom and keep alight people's hope. When everything else was taken out of Pandora's box the one thing that remained was hope. It's why we were right to create in this country the BNO scheme but we must extend that to young people to the young people who have been excluded by the current BNO scheme and I'm glad to be able to tell you that next week with my friends Chris Patton the former governor of Hong Kong and a conservative peer and Charlie Faulkner the former Lord Chancellor and Labour peer we have an amendment that I've tabled to extend that scheme under our new nationality and borders bill to young BNO holders people born after 1997 to the as the children of people who are BNO holders. It's also why we must impose sanctions on those responsible for the crimes which I have described whether it's in Xinjiang or in Hong Kong and top of my list would be Carrie Lam. Sanction Carrie Lam. And finally it's why we must never forget the CCP's atrocities from the cultural revolution to Tiananmen Square, from Tibet to Taiwan, from Wuhan to Hong Kong. They can dismantle monuments in Hong Kong but they can't dismantle our memories. They can subjugate people but not their spirit. Li Xiaobao said that freedom of expression is the fundamental freedom of human rights, the source of humanity and the mother of truth. To strangle freedom of speech is to trample on the human rights, to stifle the humanity and to suppress the truth that every person is entitled to hear. That is why we're gathered here tonight. This is the beginning of a new year, the year of the tiger. Tigers are brave and they are strong. In standing against tyrants we'll need the characteristics of a tiger. The English poet William Blake began a famous poem with the words, tiger, tiger, burning bright. With the Olympic flame we must burn bright, with courage, with indignation and with fearlessness. And we must stand in solidarity with the people of China against the CCP which it suppresses and brutalizes and we must carry on doing that for as long as it takes. Thank you for inviting me.