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https://scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3030219/us-calls-un-demand-unfettered-access-chinas-xinjiang-region
China/ Diplomacy

US calls for UN to demand unfettered access to China’s Xinjiang region

  • US State Department official seeks ‘immediate, unhindered and unmonitored access’ for UN inquiry into plight of Uygurs
  •  Remarks came at panel discussion on human rights in Xinjiang on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York
A high-security facility near what is believed to be an internment camp where Uygurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained in China's northwestern Xinjiang region. Photo: AFP

The United States urged the United Nations on Tuesday to seek unfettered access to the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to inspect the Chinese government-run mass internment camps there.

During a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, John Sullivan, the US deputy secretary of state, also criticised the UN for sending its terrorism chief to the region earlier this year to meet with local officials to discuss counterterrorism strategies.

“Instead of bolstering the UN’s authority by resisting Beijing’s cynical offer, we witnessed the erosion of UN leadership in a blow to the reputation and credibility of a body we should instead look to as a clear voice of conscience,” Sullivan said of Vladimir Voronkov’s three-day visit in June.

“The UN must seek the immediate, unhindered and unmonitored access for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,” he added.

Sullivan was speaking at a panel discussion on human rights in Xinjiang, hosted by the US along with Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain.

The event, which featured testimony from Uygur individuals who had either experienced the mass internment camps in Xinjiang or whose relatives were believed to have been detained, was attended by representatives from 31 countries as well as the European Union and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

Sullivan said that China was hosting “Potemkin” tours to prove that its measures in the region were humane: “But if there were nothing to hide, diplomats, reporters, independent investigators would be allowed to travel freely throughout Xinjiang.”

The UN itself has determined that upwards of one million Uygurs and other largely Muslim ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region are believed to be detained in mass internment camps that Beijing describes as “vocational training centres”.

“Doctors, professors and children don’t need job training,” Sullivan said. “This is a systematic campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to stop its own citizens from exercising their inalienable right to religious freedom.”

Sullivan accused China of violating a number of “key aspects” of the UN treaties, including the UN Charter and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

“We do not view these agreements as a menu of options,” he said. “They are inseparable pieces of a whole.”

US deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, shown on September 5, called Beijing’s programme for Uygurs in Xinjiang “a systematic campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to stop its own citizens from exercising their inalienable right to religious freedom”. Photo: Bloomberg
US deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, shown on September 5, called Beijing’s programme for Uygurs in Xinjiang “a systematic campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to stop its own citizens from exercising their inalienable right to religious freedom”. Photo: Bloomberg

Representatives from Britain, Germany and the European parliament on Tuesday also spoke out forcefully against the Chinese government. Tariq Ahmad, Britain’s Minister of State for the Commonwealth and the United Nations, called its measures in Xinjiang “nothing less than a systematic program against the free practice of the noble faith of Islam and [ …] Uygur culture in general”.

Paola Pampaloni, director for Asia and the Pacific at the European Union’s diplomatic service, said that the EU continued to raise the issue with Chinese diplomats behind the scenes and was now in negotiations over the conditions of a possible visit to Xinjiang.

Uygur activists present at the event urged Pampaloni to accept the invitation but only with the condition of unfettered access.

“Also go with the names of the disappeared Uygurs and ask to meet with them,” said Rashit Abbas, who said his sister, a retired doctor, had “completely disappeared” after being taken by authorities in September 2018.

No China representative attended the event on Tuesday, but Beijing voiced its displeasure in advance of it, accusing the US of using religion and human rights “as a cover to slander and smear China's Xinjiang policies and interfere in China's internal affairs again and again.”

“By holding the so-called panel discussion during the UNGA, it is going further down the wrong path,” foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said during a Tuesday news conference in Beijing.

Experts in international relations and China’s ethnic policies said ahead of Tuesday’s discussion that the event was part of a strategy by the US to bolster multilateral resistance among the international community to Beijing’s practices in Xinjiang, and predicted that the issue would continue to deepen tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

US President Donald Trump addressing the 74th session of United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on Tuesday. Photo: AAP/dpa
US President Donald Trump addressing the 74th session of United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on Tuesday. Photo: AAP/dpa

The event came just hours after US President Donald Trump used his address to the General Assembly to denounce globalism and to seek to justify his administration’s unilateral action against China on matters of trade.

The issue of Xinjiang was not mentioned in more than four minutes Trump spent outlining his grievances with Beijing, nor did he raise the subject in a US-organised event on religious freedom held at the UN on Monday.