During a meeting held on Thursday, several member countries of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) placed pressure on China over human rights abuses in the Xinjiang province.
In part of a statement that was read by French Ambassador Nicolas de Rivière to the 76th session of the UNGA rights committee, 43 countries voiced concern about increasing “reports of widespread and systematic human rights violations” by China, including the detention of more than one million people in camps.
The statement also outlined allegations of abuse, which include “reports documenting torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, forced sterilisation, sexual and gender-based violence, and forced separation of children.”
“We call on China to allow immediate, meaningful and unfettered access to Xinjiang for independent observers, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and her office,” the French envoy said.
China’s permanent UN ambassador, Zhang Jun, denied the accusations. “To the US and a few other countries: Your desperate attempts to cover up your own terrible human rights record will not work...You are using human rights as a pretext for political manoeuvring to provoke confrontation,” he said. “No matter how many times repeated, lies are still lies,” Zhang added.
According to Chinese state-owned media house Global Times, 80 other member countries supported China’s stance in response to the allegations made by France.
On behalf of 62 countries, the Cuban envoy made a joint statement saying that they “respect each country’s sovereignty, integrity and independence and no interference in other countries’ domestic affairs should be the basic international code.” The envoy added: “Issues on China’s Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Xizang regions are China’s internal affairs, and no country has the right to interfere in.”
The Kuwaiti delegate also issued a joint statement on behalf of Gulf countries that supported China. The statement said: “Countries should abide by principles of objectiveness without politicization and the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They should also respect each country’s sovereignty and not interfere in other countries' internal affairs.”
UN human rights chief Michele Bachelet has been negotiating to gain access to China’s Xinjiang province since September 2018 in order to look into reports of serious violations against the Uighur minority.
Bachelet is under increasing pressure from the West to secure unrestricted access to the secretive Chinese province, where at least one million Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group, are reported to have been detained.