U.N. body rejects debate on China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims in blow to West

The U.N. legal rights council on Thursday voted down a Western-led movement to maintain a debate about alleged human rights abuses by China against Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang in a victory for Beijing as it seeks to steer clear of further more scrutiny.

The defeat — 19 versus, 17 for, 11 abstentions — is only the 2nd time in the council’s 16-calendar year background that a movement has been turned down and is witnessed by observers as a setback to each accountability efforts, the West’s moral authority on human rights and the believability of the United Nations alone.

The United States, Canada and Britain were being amid the countries that brought the motion.

“This is a catastrophe. This is seriously disappointing,” claimed Dolkun Isa, president of the Planet Uyghur Congress, whose mom died in a camp and whose two brothers are missing.

“We will in no way give up but we are definitely disappointed by the response of Muslim nations,” he extra.
Qatar, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan rejected the motion, with the latter citing the chance of alienating China. Phil Lynch, director of the Intercontinental Provider for Human Legal rights, known as the voting history “shameful” on Twitter.

“Xinjiang-associated challenges are not human legal rights issues at all, but challenges of counter-terrorism, de-radicalization and anti-separatism,” explained China’s overseas ministry late on Thursday.

The movement was an endeavor by the United States and some Western nations around the world to “use the UN human rights physique to interfere in China’s interior affairs,” explained the international ministry in a publish on its official site.

China’s envoy experienced warned right before the vote that the motion would produce a precedent for examining other countries’ human legal rights documents.

“These days China is focused. Tomorrow any other establishing country will be qualified,” mentioned Chen Xu, introducing that a discussion would direct to “new confrontations.”

The U.N. legal rights office on Aug. 31 launched a extended-delayed report that found critical human rights violations in Xinjiang that may perhaps represent crimes towards humanity, ramping up stress on China.

Rights groups accuse Beijing of abuses versus Uyghurs, a generally Muslim ethnic minority that figures all over 10 million in the western location of Xinjiang, which include the mass use of compelled labor in internment camps. The United States has accused China of genocide. Beijing vigorously denies any abuses.

The movement is the very first time that the rights history of China, a highly effective long lasting Stability Council member, has been on the council’s agenda. The product has stoked divisions and a diplomat mentioned states have been below “enormous strain” from Beijing to back China.

International locations like Britain, the United States and Germany, vowed to continue on to do the job in the direction of accountability regardless of Thursday’s consequence. 

But activists explained the defeat of such a restricted motion, which stopped limited of trying to find an investigation, would make it difficult to put it back again on the agenda.

Universal Legal rights Group’s Marc Limon reported it was a “serious miscalculation,” citing the timing which coincides with a Western-led motion for motion on Russia.

“It is a really serious blow for the credibility of the council and a obvious victory for China,” he reported. “A lot of producing nations will see it as an adjustment absent from Western predominance in the U.N. human rights process.”

The function raised political dilemmas for several bad international locations in the 47-member council who are loath to publicly defy China for worry of jeopardizing investment decision.