UHRP Urges UK to Clarify Minister’s Meeting with IHG Over Operations Amid Atrocities, Ties to Sanctioned Entity

June 30, 2025 | 2:00 p.m. EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact: Peter Irwin +1 (646) 906-7722, Omer Kanat +1 (202) 790-1795

The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) is urging the UK government to clarify the nature and scope of Trade Minister Douglas Alexander’s meetings with InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) during his April 2025 trip to China. These meetings took place just days before the release of a UHRP report revealing IHG’s extensive operations in the Uyghur Region, including hotels on territory controlled by a sanctioned entity.

In light of this new information published since the meetings, UHRP is calling on the UK government to promptly review whether any ethical or sanctions compliance assessments were conducted prior to these engagements, to urgently investigate IHG’s activities in the region, and to affirm that, given the UK Parliament’s recognition of genocide and crimes against humanity, UK companies should not maintain operations in the Uyghur Region.

According to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information request to the UK Department for Business and Trade by Guido Fawkes, Minister Alexander participated in two meetings in Haikou with IHG’s Global Vice President, Lu Haiqing.

On April 13, Minister Alexander met with Party Secretary of Hainan Province, Feng Fei, Vice Governor Gu Gang, Haikou Mayor Ding Hui, and heads of major provincial departments such as foreign affairs, commerce, tourism, and international economic development, alongside UK business representatives, the British Chamber of Commerce for South China, and the China Britain Business Council. On the same day, Minister Alexander later met with a smaller group of UK businesses in China over lunch, including IHG’s Lu Haiqing.

In March, Lu told Chinese state media that “China, as a single market, represents about 10 percent of our global revenue, and 20 percent of our global hotels are in China,” adding that “China is a huge market, which we cannot let go.”

Minister Alexander’s meetings came just days before the release of UHRP’s April 2025 report, It Does Matter Where You Stay: International Hotel Chains in East Turkistan, written by Peter Irwin, Henryk Szadziewski, Ben Carrdus, and an anonymous researcher, which revealed how seven major international hotel chains are currently operating, and drastically expanding, in the Uyghur Region amidst atrocity crimes.

The report showed that the UK’s IHG is currently on a building spree in the Uyghur Region, and plans to open nine hotels in 2025 and at least another seven in 2026 and beyond. Planned hotels include InterContinental hotels—IHG’s flagship luxury hotel brand—in Ürümchi, Kashgar, and Ghulja.

The report also found two IHG hotels, the Holiday Inn Express Urumqi Station and Holiday Inn Express Horgos, operate on territory controlled by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a paramilitary body sanctioned by the US government for its role in the mass internment and forced labor of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples. The XPCC’s Public Security Bureau has been sanctioned by the UK and Canadian governments, as well as the European Union, for its role in serious human rights violations. 

The revelation of Minister Alexander’s meetings comes just weeks after a cross-party group of UK Parliamentarians issued a public letter to IHG’s CEO, demanding urgent clarification on the company’s expansion in the Uyghur Region. The letter cites the presence of IHG-branded hotels in areas controlled by the XPCC, and urges the company to reassess its operations in light of the UK Parliament’s recognition of genocide and crimes against humanity. Lawmakers warned that continued engagement in the region poses serious legal and reputational risks.

In the letter, the group of Parliamentarians wrote that IHG’s continued presence in the Uyghur Region is “deeply concerning in light of the region’s entrenched system of mass surveillance, forced labour, religious repression, and the erasure of Uyghur cultural heritage.” The letter goes on to say: “Continued commercial presence in such a context risks signalling tacit endorsement of policies that the UK Government and others have condemned.”

Following the initial reporting on the Trade Minister’s meetings, Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP said: “That a government minister is meeting a company working with a Chinese [government] entity responsible for this genocide is a body blow to the Uyghur now being persecuted by the Chinese government.”

IHG has failed to respond to three direct inquiries by UHRP concerning its operations in the Uyghur Region. The company did not respond to questions from The Guardian ahead of reporting on UHRP’s research. IHG’s continued business presence in the region aligns with state-led propaganda that attempts to sanitize ongoing atrocities against Uyghurs.

UHRP therefore urges the UK government to:

• Clarify the purpose and content of Minister Alexander’s meetings with IHG, including whether IHG’s operations in the Uyghur Region were discussed, and whether any due diligence or risk assessments were conducted in advance of the meetings.
• Address concerns raised by UHRP’s April 2025 report by requiring an official response from IHG regarding its operations in the Uyghur Region, including its hotels on XPCC-controlled territory.
• Investigate whether IHG’s operations on XPCC-controlled territory breach UK sanctions regulations, particularly in relation to the XPCC Public Security Bureau, which has been sanctioned by the UK government for its role in serious human rights violations.

As argued by UHRP’s Peter Irwin and Henryk Szadziewski in a recent Foreign Policy op-ed, governments must call out corporations profiting from abuses, not limit condemnation to state actors. The UK government cannot credibly stand with Uyghurs while its ministers quietly meet with companies accused of profiting from genocide, and it should publicly press IHG to account for its presence in the Uyghur Region.