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China will “firmly reject” a request from a group of western diplomats seeking to visit a region reportedly suffering under widespread repression, a top diplomat said Thursday.
“Certain western diplomats claimed that they would go to Xinjiang for the so-called investigation on the human rights conditions there,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters. “This is above and beyond the duties of a diplomat and exceeds their mandate under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. So we will by no means allow them to do so.”
Canadian officials are circulating a letter reportedly signed by 15 western ambassadors to China, all whom seek entry to Xinjiang province to assess, first-hand, reports that China is engaged in a major crackdown on the local ethnic Muslim minority. Communist authorities deny abusing human rights, although they acknowledge the establishment of camps for “a vocational education and training program.” Beijing insists the camps are a geared to counteract jihadist ideology.
“I think what they have done is very rude and unacceptable,” Hua said. “Anyone harboring malicious intentions and prejudice and seeking to interfere in China’s internal affairs will be firmly rejected.”
The fifteen ambassadors directed their letter to Chen Quanguo, according to Reuters, who sits as the Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Chen is among the officials that some U.S. lawmakers want sanctioned for human rights abuses stemming from a crackdown of the Uighurs.
“The Chinese government is creating a high-tech police state in the XUAR that is both a gross violation of privacy and international human rights,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., wrote to the Trump administration when calling for the sanctions in August. “The detention of as many as a million or more Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in ‘political reeducation’ centers or camps requires a tough, targeted, and global response.”
They issued that letter after co-chairing a hearing of the Congressional Executive Commission on China, focused on human rights issues in Xinjiang.
“The stated goal of the current campaign is to ‘Sinicize religion’ and ‘adapt religion to a socialist society,’ suggesting that Beijing wagers that it now possesses the political, diplomatic, and technological capabilities to transform religion and ethnicity in Chinese society in a way that its predecessors never could, even during the peak horrors of the Cultural Revolution and other heinous Maoist campaigns intended to remake Chinese society,” Ambassador Kelly Currie, one of the top U.S. officials at the United Nations, told lawmakers in July.
Chinese officials in the region have “banned parents from giving their children a number of traditional Islamic names,” Currie added, enforced by Communist “Party personnel embedded in people’s homes.”
Hua said that western powers need to get “all the facts straight” before talking about Xinjiang.
“Maybe you could ask these ambassadors whether the ethnic minority groups in their countries like the U.S. and Canada, learn English?” she suggested. “Is their learning of English also considered as an attempt by their governments to extinguish or assimilate languages and cultures of the ethnic minority groups?”
She reiterated that foreign diplomats and reporters should not expect permission “to travel to Xinjiang to pressure or point fingers at the local government,” although it’s not an absolute ban on travel.
“The relevant people can surely go to Xinjiang for sightseeing tours or visits,” Hua said.
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