BEIJING: China has claimed that the webpage of US State Department highlighting the human rights abuses of Uyghurs by the Chinese government is “full of lies and rumours”.
Beijing on Monday asserted “the US only intends to contain China” and “destabilise Xinjiang under the pretext of human rights”.
“The US Department of State’s webpage on Xinjiang is full of lies and rumours. Over the past four decades, the Uyghur population in Xinjiang grew from 5.55 million to over 12 million, registering a more than 100 per cent increase,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said.
He added that the US State Department “is stigmatising the human rights situation in Xinjiang” and are “pinning labels of “forced sterilisation”, “repression of religious freedom” and “forced labour”.
Wang argued that there are about 24,000 mosques in Xinjiang, which is “more than 10 times of that in the US”. “There is one mosque for every 530 Muslims in Xinjiang, which is higher than that of many Muslim countries,” he claimed.
The spokesperson accused the US of “not caring” about the human rights situation in Xinjiang but “containing China’s development under the pretext of human rights”.
China has been criticised globally for cracking down on the Uyghurs by sending them to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious activities, and sending members of the community to undergo some form of forcible re-education or indoctrination.
In another crackdown on China, the US on Monday banned cotton, hair products, computer components and some textiles from Xinjiang province, which are made “using forced labour”.
“By taking this action, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is combating illegal and inhumane forced labour, a type of modern slavery, used to make goods that the Chinese government then tries to import into the United States. When China attempts to import these goods into our supply chains, it also disadvantages American workers and businesses,” said Acting DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli.
“President Trump and this Department have, and always will, put American workers and businesses first and protect American citizens from participating in these egregious human rights violations,” Cuccinelli added. (ANI)
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