Activists and UN rights experts including people who escaped the camps have said that at least one million Uyghur Muslims are detained in concentration camps in the remote western region. China denies this claim and retorts these camps to provide vocational training and is needed to fight extremism and radicalism.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the U.N. Human Rights Council that China was taking counter-terrorism measures lawfully and that Xinjiang enjoyed “social stability and sound development” after four years without any “terrorist case.” He stated further that there were 24,000 mosques in Xinjiang, and people of all ethnic groups enjoyed labor rights.”
Wang said, “These basic facts show that there has never been so-called genocide, forced labor, or religious oppression in Xinjiang,” and added, “Such inflammatory accusations are fabricated out of ignorance and prejudice, they are simply malicious and politically driven hype and couldn’t be further from the truth.”
World leaders have condemned the detention and alleged genocide of the Uyghurs in China.
Recently, the American Biden administration supported a last-minute resolution by the Trump administration about China committing genocide in Xinjiang. Biden in his speech on his first official trip since taking office as president in January said, ” China is trying very hard to become the world leader. And to get that moniker and be able to do that they have to gain the confidence of other countries. And as long as they are engaged in an activity that is contrary to basic human rights, it’s going to be hard for them to do that.”
Germany’s foreign minister Heiko Maas said: “Our commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights also leaves no room for the arbitrary detention of ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs in Xinjiang or China’s crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong.”
The British foreign secretary Dominic Raab earlier denounced torture, forced labor, and sterilizations that he received a report of that was happening against Uyghur on an “industrial scale” in Xinjiang. “The situation in Xinjiang is beyond the pale,” he said.
Wang, however, now invited U.N. scrutiny to the genocide charges though he set no timeline or dates for the invitation. In his words, he said, “The door to Xinjiang is always open. People from many countries who have visited Xinjiang have learned the facts and the truth on the ground. China also welcomes the High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Xinjiang,” he said, referring to U.N. rights chief Michelle Bachelet, whose office has been negotiating terms of access to the country.
In the meantime, BBC makes a strong claim that there is a credible case that China is carrying out genocide.
The document entails evidence that the Chinese government practices enslavement, rape, torture, enforced sterilization, and persecution of the Uyghur Muslims. The opinion states “There is compelling evidence that detainees are subject to a range of forms of serious physical harm.”
It also reports, “Detainees report having been punished by the administration of electric shocks, forced to remain in stress positions for an extended period of time, beaten, deprived of food, shackled and blindfolded.”
Fact or fiction is still yet to be fully uncovered. Unless there is free access to China and the UN bodies are allowed full and free entrance into the Uyghur concentration camps, shifting shadows and shady mists haunt Xinjiang today. No one really knows what is really happening. China being one of the charter members of the United Nations and is one of five permanent members of its Security Council holds an advantage where no country is really holding it accountable. How could so people be telling lies about the Chinese government? There’s no smoke without a fire.