China slams UN move to discuss anti-minority violence in Xinjiang

China, on Thursday, called upon the UN member states to boycott an event set up by Germany, US and Britain to address the alleged clampdown on Muslims and other minority groups in Xinjiang.

In a note accessed by Reuters, China alleged that the organisers are using "human rights issues as a political tool to interfere in China's internal affairs to create division and turbulence and disrupt China's development."

The virtual UN event is set to be addressed by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) executive director Ken Roth, the Amnesty secretary-general Agnes Callamard and the US, Germany, and Britain's ambassadors on May 12. The event aims to consider ways to promote the human rights of ethnic Turkic communities in Xinjiang through the UN system, member states and civil society.

"It is a politically motivated event. We request your mission NOT to participate in this anti-China event," said China. It added that the organisers are obsessed with provoking a confrontation with China and that the provocative event can only lead to more conflict.

Last December, the Centre for Global Policy released a report which said that more than half a million ethnic minority groups are forced into labour in Xinjiang. Following the allegations of forced labour and violation of human rights by activist groups, Washington withheld the import of cotton and tomato products from Xinjiang in January. However, Beijing shunned the accusations, claiming that camps accused of detaining and torturing Uyghurs were set by the government to provide vocational training sessions to an average of 1.29 million workers. In a report titled 'Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang', the country showed that of the 103,300 farmers from the southern Xinjiang region, 98,300 of them were employed by reinforcing the training.

"Beijing has been trying for years to bully governments into silence but that strategy has failed miserably, as more and more states step forward to voice horror and revulsion at China's crimes against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims," said the HRW UN director Louis Charbonneau on Friday.