By Tahir imin Uyghurian
In response to a report that warned of potential crimes against humanity, the United States on Monday requested that the UN Human Rights Council discuss the issue of rights breaches in the so-called Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (that Uyghurs call East Turkistan).
United States submitted the first-ever draft resolution to the highest UN rights body with a China-specific mandate, requesting it to ‘conduct a debate on the situation of human rights in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’ during the meeting of the council.
According to AFP, which saw the draft, it was co-sponsored by Britain, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Norway.
China strongly disagreed with these accusations and denounced the report, calling the UN a ‘thug and accomplice of the US and the West.’
It argues that to combat extremism, it operates vocational training facilities in the area.
Xu Guixiang, a top propagandist of the so-called Xinjiang government, responded to a question about how China would react to a council resolution by saying that Beijing would “resolutely adopt suitable countermeasures.”
“We’re not scared. We are prepared for combat”, he said.
The UN Uyghur report emphasized “credible” claims of widespread torture, arbitrary incarceration, and abuse of religious and reproductive rights. It was released on August 31 – just minutes before Bachelet’s mandate came to an end.
Many Uyghur rights groups welcomed the report, while others accused it of downplaying the Uyghur genocide and its seriousness.