URUMQI: The facts have proven time and again that politicizing human rights and practicing double standards is deeply unpopular, and attempts to use Xinjiang-related issues to keep China down or contain it will get nowhere, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Thursday.
The 51st session of the United Nations Human Rights Council voted down a United States-led draft decision on Xinjiang on October 6.
In response to a media query, the spokesperson said that for some time now, the U.S. and some other Western countries have been misinforming the public about Xinjiang, and seeking political manipulation in the name of human rights simply to smear China’s image and contain China’s development.
Despite facts and truths, these countries propagated falsehoods on Xinjiang at the Human Rights Council, and put together a draft decision on that erroneous basis, in an attempt to use UN human rights bodies as a tool to interfere in China’s internal affairs and to serve the agenda of using Xinjiang to contain China, the spokesperson added.
“The international community would not be easily misled. Despite pressure from the U.S. and some other Western countries on the member states, the draft decision ended up unsupported by the majority of the Human Rights Council membership, especially many members of the developing world,” the spokesperson said, adding that the agenda pushed by the U.S. and some other Western forces has again failed to gain international support.
“The issues related to Xinjiang are not about human rights. They are about countering violent terrorism, radicalization and separatism,” the spokesperson said.
Thanks to strenuous efforts, there has been no violent terrorist incident in Xinjiang for over five consecutive years. The human rights of people of all ethnic backgrounds in Xinjiang have been protected like never before, the spokesperson added.
The spokesperson said that the international community is clearly aware that the ultimate motive of the U.S. and some other Western countries behind their Xinjiang narrative is to contain China, and does not like this pattern of using human rights as a pretext to meddle in other countries’ internal affairs.
In recent years, nearly 100 countries, including many Islamic countries, have spoken out at the Human Rights Council, the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly and elsewhere openly to support China’s just position on issues related to Xinjiang and oppose using these issues to interfere in China’s internal affairs.
“The facts have proven time and again that politicizing human rights and practicing double standards is deeply unpopular, and attempts to use Xinjiang-related issues to keep China down or contain it will get nowhere,” the spokesperson said.
The issues that the Human Rights Council truly needs to focus on are the serious human rights violations concerning the U.S., the UK and some Western forces, including systemic racism and racial discrimination, infringement of the rights of refugees and migrants, rampant gun violence, unilateral coercive measures, and massive killings of innocent civilians in overseas military operations. The victims are still waiting for justice to be done and the international community demands accountability, the spokesperson added.
“We urge the U.S. and some other Western forces to abandon political manipulation, disinformation and suppression, return to the track of dialogue and cooperation, and make real contributions to the global advancement of human rights,” the spokesperson said.
‘Double standards’
Before Thursday’s voting at the 51st session of the Human Rights Council, Chen Xu, head of the Chinese Mission to UN in Geneva, also described the Xinjiang-related draft decision as “with real intention to take advantage of UN human rights bodies to interfere in China’s internal affairs and use Xinjiang-related issues to contain China.”
Chen told the council that over the last six decades, the Uygur population in Xinjiang expanded from 2.2 million to around 12 million, and the average life expectancy increased from 30 to 74.7 years.
“Turning a blind eye to these facts and truth, the United States and some other countries had fabricated and spread numerous lies and rumors, in an attempt to smear China, undermine Xinjiang’s stability and contain China’s development,” he said. “It is a typical example of political manipulation and the gravest violation of the human rights of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.”
Chen further stressed that so far, all country-specific resolutions of the Human Rights Council are aimed at developing countries, and the United States and some other countries, in disregard of their own serious human rights violations, are indulged in pointing fingers at others.
“This is typical double standards. The international community must not allow any attempt to politicize or instrumentalize human rights issues, with a view of preventing multilateral human rights bodies from serving the political goals of certain countries,” the Chinese ambassador said.
–The Daily Mail-CGTN news exchange item
