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GENEVA • Western countries, including France, Germany and the United States, yesterday urged China to close detention camps that hold one million Uighurs and other Muslims.
But China has rejected Western criticism of alleged mass detention and close monitoring of Uyghurs in western Xinjiang, calling the allegations "seriously inaccurate".
"We will not accept politically-motivated accusations from a few bias-bearing countries," said Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng to the UN Human Rights Council. United Nations.
During a debate at the Geneva forum – which reports alleged violations in every UN member state every five years and reviewed China's record yesterday – Beijing said that it protected the freedoms of its 55 ethnic minorities.
China said Xinjiang was threatened by militant Islamists and separatists. He rejects all allegations of ill-treatment and denies mass internment, although Chinese officials have stated that citizens guilty of minor offenses are sent to vocational training centers to work there.
Referring to Xinjiang, Mr. Le said: "Stability is the most important factor, prevention must be a priority.The establishment of training centers is a preventive measure to fight against terrorism."
Another Chinese delegate from Xinjiang said the authorities "offered free vocational training with a diploma after examination" to people "forced or attracted" by extremist groups. In the past 22 months, there have been "no incidents of violent terrorism," said another Chinese delegate.
One after the other, however, Western countries have denounced what they have described as a deterioration of human rights in China since the last review, particularly with regard to the treatment of Muslims from Xinjiang.
"We are alarmed by the Chinese government's increasingly severe crackdown on Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region," said US Trade Commissioner Mark. Cassayre.
The United States called on China to "abolish all forms of arbitrary detention, including Xinjiang internment camps, and to immediately release the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people detained in these camps" , did he declare. China should free activists, including Mr. Wang Quanzhang, Mr. Ilham Tohti and Mr. Huang Qi, said Mr. Cassayre.
Beijing should "end massive imprisonment" and "guarantee freedom of religion and belief, including in Tibet and Xinjiang," said French Ambassador François Rivasseau.
A panel of UN human rights experts said on Aug. 10 that he had received numerous credible reports that one million ethnic Uyghur people would be detained in a community. "massive internment camp". In the debate yesterday, nearly 1,000 Tibetan and Uyghur demonstrators from all over Europe demonstrated in front of the UN office in Geneva. They carried placards saying "STOP the ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs in China" and "Tibet dying, China lies".
REUTERS
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