NEW YORK • China has urged United Nations member states not to attend an event planned for this week by Germany, the United States and Britain on the repression of Uighur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang, according to a note seen by Reuters.
"It is a politically-motivated event," China's UN mission wrote in the note last Thursday. "We request your mission not to participate in this anti-China event."
Beijing has charged that the event organisers, which include several other European states, Australia and Canada, use "human rights issues as a political tool to interfere in China's internal affairs like Xinjiang, to create division and turbulence and disrupt China's development".
"They are obsessed with provoking confrontation with China," the note, which Reuters saw on Friday said, adding that "the provocative event can only lead to more confrontation".
The ambassadors of the US, Germany and Britain are due to address the virtual US event on Wednesday, along with Human Rights Watch executive director Ken Roth and Amnesty International secretary-general Agnes Callamard.
The aim 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", according to an invitation to the event.
Western states and rights groups have accused the authorities in Xinjiang of detaining and torturing Uighurs in camps, which the US has described as genocide. In January, Washington banned the import of cotton and tomato products from Xinjiang over allegations of forced labour.
China denies the accusations and describes the camps as vocational training centres to combat religious extremism.
"Beijing has been trying for years to bully governments into silence but that strategy has failed miserably, as more states step forward to voice horror and revulsion at China's crimes against Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims," Human Rights Watch UN director Louis Charbonneau said on Friday.
Separately, China's ambassador in Washington on Thursday called for the US and other Western countries to stop spreading misinformation about Xinjiang and listen to what the 25 million people there and the rest of China say about the beautiful area.
Mr Cui Tiankai said critics should "heed the opinions of objective and rational scholars and media, especially those from other countries and regions, so they will be able to tell truth from falsehood and right from wrong".
"In the past 40 years, the Uighur population in Xinjiang has more than doubled. Does that look like genocide?" he added during an online meeting titled "Xinjiang is a Wonderful Land".
He also said that talk of "forced labour" is groundless, as workers in Xinjiang have freedom of choice when it comes to jobs. Workers, he noted, sign labour contracts as free and equal parties, with their rights and interests well protected.
"Given such undeniable facts, why are some Western organisations and individuals, disguised as academic institutions and scholars, still making noises and blatantly fabricating lies?" Mr Cui asked.
"Why do some forces in the US use Xinjiang to launch massive smear campaigns against China? The truth is, they want to bring about a collapse and split-up of China from the inside."
He said the objective of foreign "concerns" about Xinjiang's human rights situation is to use the region to contain China.
"Their typical ploy is to first presume guilt, and then to find and even fabricate matching evidence. They don't care about truth whatsoever and only mind their political schemes," he said.
REUTERS, CHINA DAILY/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
