UN members demand 'immediate, unfettered' access to China's Xinjiang region

A group of United Nations members have asked China to grant “immediate, meaningful and unfettered access” for the group’s human rights chief to Xinjiang allowing him to inspect human rights abuses of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities. In a virtual meeting called by Germany, the UK, and the US, German ambassador to the UN Christoph Heusgen, called on Beijing to respect the human rights of all and ‘tear down concentration camps’ in its northwest. Heusgen was a part of a group comprised of ambassadors, academics, and rights activists, all of whom together accused Beijing of systematically persecuting minorities in Xinjiang.

"We appeal to China to respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and we ask China to tear down the detention camps. If you have nothing to hide, why do you not finally grant unimpeded access to the commissioner for human rights?", Heusgen asked China during the summit.

Meanwhile, the UN's special rapporteur on minority issues, Fernand de Varennes, said the UN had itself been "timid" in its failure to criticize the situation in Xinjiang, given the scale of the allegations made. Highlighting that the UN seemed “very timid” in not being “vocal or assertive” in seeking Beijing’ collaboration on getting access to Xijiang. "Where there's smoke, there's fire, and there's a heck of a lot of smoke right now affecting hundreds of thousands of people, most of them minorities, most of them Muslims and most of them Uygurs," Varennes added.

'Extremely worrying' 

The call was supported by a Turkish delegation, which said that they had raised the issue with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi during his visit to the country earlier in March. Stressing that the conditions of Turkish Muslims in the country was "extremely worrying”, the delegation said that it supported immediate, meaningful and unfettered access to Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region" for the UN human rights chief.

Previously, the European Parliament had observed that Chinese authorities were deliberately sending Uyghur woman of childbearing age into forced abortions, intrauterine injections and sterilisation. However, China has consistently denied allegations of forced labour and other claims of human rights abuses in the area, which is home to about 11 million Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority that speak a language closely related to Turkish and have their own distinct culture.  The US State Department estimates that since 2017, up to two million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities could have passed through the camp system, which China calls vocational training centres designed to fight extremism.

(With ANI inputs )

Image: AP