This photo taken on June 4, 2019 shows a man walking past a screen showing footage of Chinese President Xi Jinping in Kashgar, northwest China’s Xinjiang region. – Greg Baker / AFP
France proposed on Tuesday that an “international mission emanating from independent observers”, “under the leadership” of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, go to Xinjiang, in the north-west of China, to investigate the situation of the Uyghur Muslim minority in this region.
Table Of Contents
Jean-Yves Le Drian denounces unjustifiable practices
Speaking to MPs, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian denounced “unjustifiable practices” perpetrated, according to him, against the Uyghur minority. Already on July 22, before the National Assembly, the Minister had referred to “internment camps for Uyghurs, mass detentions, disappearances, forced labor, forced sterilizations, the destruction of Uyghur cultural heritage and in particular places of worship, surveillance of the population and more generally all the repressive system set up in this region ”
Reacting to these statements the next day, China denounced “lies”. Beijing’s policy in Xinjiang “does not target any specific ethnic group or religion,” Beijing spokesman said, assuring that his country’s policy in the region was not a matter of human rights or freedom of worship, but of the fight against “terrorism and separatism”.
If the accusations are unfounded, “you have to go and attest to it on the spot”
“My statements last week aroused reactions from the Chinese authorities,” the French minister replied Tuesday. “I tell them here that I took note of it,” he continued. Since they say that my words are unfounded, we propose that there be an international mission from independent observers, under the leadership of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet [Haut-Commissaire des Nations unies aux droits de l’Homme], who goes there, that they see and that they bear witness, since if the Chinese authorities say that it does not exist then it is necessary to go to attest it on the spot. “
The Uyghurs are the main ethnic group in Xinjiang, a huge region that notably shares borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Regularly struck by deadly attacks, attributed by Beijing to separatists or Uyghur Islamists, it is under close police surveillance.