Wed 07 October 2020:
Western diplomats at the United Nations criticized China for its human rights abuses against ethnic Uighur Muslims and its crackdown on Hong Kong’s autonomy Tuesday.
The US, Japan and many EU nations joined a call on October 6 urging China to respect the human rights of minority Uyghurs, and also expressing concern about the situation in Hong Kong.
Among the 39 signatory countries were the United States, most of the EU member states including Albania and Bosnia, as well as Canada, Haiti, Honduras, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
“We are gravely concerned about the human rights situation in Xinjiang and the recent developments in Hong Kong,” the declaration said.
“We call on China to allow immediate, meaningful and unfettered access to Xinjiang for independent observers including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,” it added.
Immediately afterward, the envoy for Pakistan stood up and read out a statement signed by 55 countries, including China, denouncing any use of the situation in Hong Kong as an excuse for interference in China’s internal affairs.
China hit back
Addressing Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Chinese Ambassador Zhang Jun criticized what he called their “hypocritical” attitude and demanded the three countries “put away your arrogance and prejudice, and pull back from the brink, now.”
The organization Human Rights Watch praised the fact that so many countries had signed on to the declaration “despite China’s persistent threats and intimidation tactics against those who speak out.”
Without addressing the Uighur issue, Zhang Jun claimed China’s human rights achievements are “widely recognized” and he urged Washington to “take a good look in the mirror” and eliminate racial discrimination in its own society before attacking other countries.
“Millions of Americans have cried out ‘I can’t breathe’ and ‘Black lives matter,'” the envoy said, referencing recent calls of protesters in the U.S. demanding an end to decades of racial discrimination and injustice in the aftermath of the death in police custody of an African American man, George Floyd, in May.
Zhang also hit out at President Donald Trump’s repeated accusations that the coronavirus pandemic originated in China and that Beijing is responsible for its global spread.
“What the U.S. government needs is treating the sick and saving lives, not spreading the political virus and making troubles everywhere,” the Chinese envoy said.
More pressure
In 2019, a similar text drafted by the United Kingdom only garnered 23 signatures.
Western diplomats have said China is piling on more pressure each year to dissuade UN member states from signing such statements, threatening to block the renewal of peacekeeping missions for some countries or preventing others from building new embassy facilities in China.
On October 5, China led a group of 26 countries in a joint declaration calling for an end to U.S. sanctions which they said violate human rights during the struggle to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
Last month, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said it had identified more than 380 “suspected detention facilities” in the Xinjiang region, where China is believed to have held more than 1 million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim Turkic-speaking residents.
In the United States, the House of Representatives passed a bill at the end of September that aims to ban imports from Xinjiang, contending that abuses of the Uyghur people are so widespread that all goods from the region should be considered made with slave labor.
