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UN accuses China of holding more than a million Muslims in secret prison

SHAFAQNA – The United Nations has accused China of holding as many as a million Uighur and other Muslim people in a vast web of detention camps in the far western Xinjiang province. United Nations’ human rights experts have voiced alarm over alleged Chinese political re-education camps for Muslim Uighurs and called for the immediate release of those detained on the grounds of what China describes as “countering terrorism”.

According to LAtimes, The United Nations have called for China to shut down their reported political “re-education camps” in the Xinjiang Province, where it is said that over one million Muslim Uyghurs are held indefinitely without charge in what resembles a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy.

Up to 1 million Uighurs hold involuntarily in extra-legal detention

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed alarm over “numerous reports of detention of large numbers of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities held incommunicado and often for long periods, without being charged or tried, under the pretext of countering terrorism and religious extremism.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination cited estimates that up to 1 million Uighurs may be held involuntarily in extra-legal detention in China’s far western Xinjiang province.

China denies such internment camps exist

The Chinese government, who deny any such claims, are said to have brought in strongman leader Chen Quanguo in 2016, who formerly governed tight-restricted Tibet, to oversee the introduction of a mass surveillance and detention programme in the province; leading to the recruitment of tens of thousands of security personnel to run the camps, according to China expert Adrian Zenz.

China denies such internment camps exist but says criminals involved in minor offenses are sent to “vocational education and employment training centres”. “The argument that ‘a million Uighurs are detained in re-education centres’ is completely untrue,” Chinese representative Hu Lianhe this month told the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva.

United Nations committee rebuffed Beijing’s denials of the re-education camps

On the other hand, a United Nations committee in Geneva examining China’s record on racial discrimination rebuffed Beijing’s denials of the re-education camps and called on it to acknowledge the existence of the facilities and release those who are being detained.

In a report released on Thursday, the committee dismissed China’s justifications that it faced a terrorist problem in the Xinjiang province as nothing more than “a pretext” for detaining the Muslim minorities, Daily Pakistan.

A bipartisan group of 17 US lawmakers, meanwhile, urged the Trump administration to sanction Chinese officials and companies allegedly involved in the detention centres. The Trump administration has shown a willingness to sanction officials using the Global Magnitsky Act.

In December, the Trump administration slapped sanctions on Gao Yan, a Chinese police official in Beijing, for denying medical care to Cao Shunli, a human rights activist who died in custody.

Another alleged human rights abuser hit with sanctions is Myanmar general Maung Maung Soe, who was accused of the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya people.

China has said Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists who plot attacks and stir up tensions between the mostly Muslim Uighur minority and the ethnic Han Chinese majority.

The bipartisan group of US politicians urged Washington to impose sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for rights abuses of Muslims in Xinjiang, saying the region was being turned into a “high-tech police state”.

But Beijing quickly hit back, telling US politicians to instead focus on their own issues, ABC reported.

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