The NGO Amnesty International (AI) criticized the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, on Tuesday, the lack of action in the face of “serious human rights violations” perpetrated by the Chinese authorities against Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region.
It’s a statement, the organization described as “disappointing” that this week a new session of the UN Human Rights Council closes “without being able to debate the UN conclusions on Xinjiang.
Thus, he pointed out that there are new “shocking” testimonies from families of Uyghur and Kazakh ethnicity who are “held in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” and asked Bachelet again, whom he accused of “repeatedly refusing to recognize its seriousness” , act.
“The stories of these families allow us to peek into the horrors that are taking place in Xinjiang, which constitute crimes against humanity. Many people reported having multiple family members in detention, illustrating the sheer scale of the abuse,” said AI Secretary General Agnès Callamard.
In this regard, he stated that the parsimony that has characterized the UN response to the “dystopian nightmare of Xinjiang further worsens the situation of the victims and survivors of the Chinese government’s massive campaign of imprisonment, torture and persecution against Muslim minorities.”
“We continue to call on the Chinese government to dismantle its vast system of internment camps; put an end to arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and ill-treatment both in prisons and elsewhere”, collects the text.
In addition, the NGO stressed the importance of holding authorities “accountable”for which it is “essential” that Bachelet publish her report, which “accumulates much delay.”
“His constant refusal to denounce crimes against humanity and other serious human rights violations in Xinjiang is an obstacle to justice, as well as an embarrassment for the United Nations system,” he said.
TESTIMONIALS
AI recently interviewed the relatives of dozens of people held in the Chinese region and accused of alleged terrorism crimes, among other charges. All of them pointed out that the arrests were made for “as trivial” issues as traveling or paying for their children’s education abroad..
Kazakh Gulaisha Oralbay explained that her brother, Dilshat Oralbay, a retired Uyghur journalist and translator, was arrested shortly after returning to the region in 2017. “There is no court, they put him in jail and told him it would be for 25 years and now “, said.
“I don’t even think he himself knows why. Someone said it was because he had traveled to Kazakhstan. There is no justification or clear reason,” he continued.
For his part, Abdula Rasul told Amnesty that his brother Parhat Rasul, a farmer and part-time butcher, was arrested and taken to an internment camp in May 2017. The family has not heard from him directly since then, but in 2018 a source close to the matter informed them that Parhat had been sentenced to nine years in prison..
Parhat’s family believes he was arrested simply for being a practicing Muslim and carrying out charitable activities. Some relatives have indicated that Parhat’s wife, Kalbinur, and his mother-in-law, Parizat Abdugul, have also been imprisoned.
The NGO recalled that those who denounce the situation run a huge risk; Several family members of detainees said that the authorities had threatened them for speaking about it publicly.
Thus, he insisted that China‘s repression against people of the Uyghur, Kazakh and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, carried out under the pretext of fighting “terrorism”, has been widely documented since 2017. In 2021, an exhaustive report published by Amnesty International reflected that the massive and systematic imprisonment, torture and persecution organized by the Chinese authorities constituted crimes against humanity.
“Chinese authorities have used their repressive surveillance state to try to hide these violations, but information continues to leak from Xinjiang,” the organization said.
Callamard, for his part, stressed that “despite growing evidence, the Chinese authorities continue to lie about large-scale arbitrary detention in Xinjiang” and maintains that AI supports the idea that the UN establish an independent, impartial mechanism and internationally to investigate alleged crimes and other violations committed by the Chinese government in Xinjiang.
(With information from Europe Press)
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Source-www.infobae.com