Alwaght- China rejected on Monday the UN reports on holding some 1 million Uighurs in internment camps in the Xinjiang autonomous region.
Gay McDougall, a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, said on Friday it had received many credible reports that 1 million ethnic Muslim Uighurs in China are held in what resembles a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy, a sort of no rights zone.”
According to Associated Press, China's delegation told the UN panel that "there is no arbitrary detention ... there are no such things as re-education centers." It said Xinjiang provides convicted criminals with skills to reintegrate themselves at "vocational education and employment training centers."
"The argument that a million Uighurs are detained in re-education centers is completely untrue," the report added.
However, Chinese state media have defended government's “intense controls” in Xinjiang.
The state-run Global Times published dual English and Chinese-language editorials on Monday criticizing western interference and defending its policies in Xinjiang, where ethnic violence and militant attacks have prompted a crackdown and an intense militarization of the region.
Last year, 21% of all arrests in China were in Xinjiang, a territory that accounts for about 1.5% of the population, according to the advocacy group Chinese Human Rights Defenders. Critics say controls over religious and cultural expression have increased since 2016 under the region’s Communist party secretary, Chen Quanguo, drafted to Xinjiang from Tibet.
In an editorial with the headline “Safeguarding Xinjiang’s peace and stability is the most important human right”, the Global Times said: “There is no doubt that intense control contributes to Xinjiang’s peace today. It’s a necessary stage guiding [Xinjiang] to peace and prosperity, and it will not last long.”
