Chinese Regime Lashes Out at UN Xinjiang Human Rights Event

The Jieleixi No.13 village mosque with slogans “Love the [Chinese Communist] Party, Love China,” in Yangisar, south of Kashgar, in China's western Xinjiang region on June 4, 2019. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images

The Chinese regime’s foreign ministry spokeswoman reacted angrily to a report that Beijing had urged UN member members not to attend a UN event spotlighting rights abuses in the far western Xinjiang region.

According to a Reuters report of May 8, the Chinese regime asked member states to boycott the virtual event planned by Germany, the United States, Britain, and other countries, due to be held on Wednesday.

In a note by China’s UN mission dated May 6, the Chinese regime said: “It is a politically motivated event ... we request your mission NOT to participate in this anti-China event,” according to the report. The Chinese Communist Party also charged the organizers with wanting to “create division and turbulence and disrupt China’s development.”

The ambassadors of the United States, Germany, and the UK will address the event, along with the Human Rights Watch executive director, Ken Roth, and Amnesty International secretary-general, Agnes Callamard.

The aim of the event, as stated in the invitation, is to “discuss how the UN system, member states, and civil society can support and advocate for the human rights of members of ethnic Turkic communities in Xinjiang.”

The regime’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying at a regular press briefing on Monday stepped up criticism of the event, and lashed out at its organizers, including the United States, for “abusing the resources and platform of the UN.”

“This is a shameful travesty of the UN,” she said.

More than one million Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslim minorities are being held in internment camps in Xinjiang, in what the United States has designated a genocide. Inside these facilities, researchers say detainees have been subject to political indoctrination, torture, mass rape, and forced labor.

The Chinese regime denies these abuses, and describes the camps as “vocational training centers” to combat “extremism.”

Recently, foreign ministers from the UK, Germany, and other members of the G7 group of countries meeting in London unequivocally condemned “human rights violations and abuses in Xinjiang and in Tibet, especially the targeting of Uyghurs, members of other ethnic and religious minority groups, and the existence of a large-scale network of ‘political re-education camps,’ and reports of forced labor systems and forced sterilization.”

In January, Washington banned the import of cotton and tomato products from Xinjiang over allegations of forced labor.

Reuters contributed to this report.