(TibetanReview.net, Oct23’24) –A group of 15 Western nations have on Oct 22 made a joint statement at the UN General Assembly committee meeting on human rights in New York City, calling on China to release all arbitrarily detained Uyghur Muslims and Tibetans and to allow independent human rights observers to visit sites to make assessments.
“We call on China to allow unfettered and meaningful access to Xinjiang and Tibet for independent observers, including from the UN, to evaluate the human rights situation.” Australian Ambassador to the United Nations James Larsen has said.
Making the statement on behalf of 15 countries, including the United States, Canada, Germany and Japan, Larsen has said, “Transparency and openness are key to allaying concerns.”
China stands accused in numerous well-documented UN, international human rights group and other research reports of having detained as many as 1 million ethnic Uyghur Muslims in “reeducation camps” in Xinjiang, as well as cracking down on freedoms in Tibet in a move to Sinicize the territory’s historical and cultural identity.
“China has had many opportunities to meaningfully address the UN’s well-founded concerns,” voanews.com Oct 22 quoted Larsen as saying. “Instead, China labeled the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ assessment as ‘illegal and void’ during its Universal Periodic Review adoption in July.”
He has noted that Tibetans have also been targeted by Beijing for their peaceful expression of political views, had their language, culture, educational and religious rights erode, and experienced restrictions on their travel.
Referring to China’s no-holds-barred resistance to any scrutiny of its human rights record, Larsen has said, “No country has a perfect human rights record, but no country is above fair scrutiny of its human rights obligations.”
China’s Ambassador Fu Cong has told the committee, “the true intentions of Australia and the US (is) to use human rights as a pretext to interfere in China’s internal affairs and to curb its development and to broadly suppress developing countries that adhere to an independent and autonomous foreign policy.”
The United States and several other countries have described China’s actions in Xinjiang as genocide or genocidal while the exile Tibetan administration has accused Beijing of being out to Sinicize Tibet to destroy its ethnographic, historical, and cultural identity.