A Chinese language government-sponsored go to to Xinjiang by 25 Beijing-based ambassadors and different diplomats from creating international locations has come underneath fireplace by human rights activists for pushing an official narrative that the largely Muslim Uyghurs within the far-western area are thriving, regardless of the fact of extreme repression.
The delegation, which included diplomats from Dominica, Myanmar, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Nicaragua and Mexico, visited the western autonomous area from July 31 to Aug. 3.
Xinhua information company and CGTN, China’s state-run worldwide TV broadcaster, lined the diplomats as they visited Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, the cities of Aksu and Kashgar, and different important locales to look at the area’s “financial and social progress” and affirm that “the native inhabitants in Xinjiang resides a cheerful life.”
And the Chinese language authorities’s efforts seem to have paid off.
“Throughout our time in Xinjiang, we had open conversations with the native individuals and noticed that they lead content material and comfortable lives,” Martin Charles, the ambassador to China from the small Caribbean island nation of Dominica, advised Xinhua.
“We didn’t come throughout any situations of pressured labor, and there have been no indications of human rights violations,” he stated.
China is counting on government-organized visits for international officers and influential individuals from numerous professions to advertise another imaginative and prescient of Uyghur life in Xinjiang amid rising condemnation by Western nations over its maltreatment of Uyghurs and different Turkic minorities.
The U.S. authorities and a number of other Western parliaments have declared that the continuing human rights abuses, together with arbitrary detentions, torture, pressured sterilizations of Uyghur girls, and compelled labor, quantity to genocide and crimes in opposition to humanity.
China has additionally denounced a report issued practically a yr in the past by the U.N. excessive commissioner for human rights that documented instances of extreme rights abuses in Xinjiang. The report stated that the abuses may represent worldwide crimes, specifically crimes in opposition to humanity.
Although the teams invited to tour the area are numerous, they’ve one factor in widespread: All of them help China’s “Xinjiang coverage.”
‘Telling the story of Xinjiang properly’
In early February, one other visiting delegation of Beijing-based ambassadors and diplomats from African international locations, together with Senegal, Benin, Mali, Rwanda, Madagascar, Malawi, Uganda, Lesotho and Chad, visited Xinjiang and expressed help for China’s insurance policies there.
All of the international locations preserve robust financial ties with China as a result of many have benefited from Chinese language-built and financed infrastructure initiatives underneath the Belt and Street Initiative. In addition they help China throughout the United Nations.
Members of the delegation of diplomats who visited in July additionally expressed their rejection of a earlier proposal by the U.N.’s high human rights physique to carry debate on alleged rights abuses in opposition to Uyghurs and different ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. The proposal by largely Western nations, together with america, was voted down in October 2022.
Six days earlier than the diplomats visited Xinjiang, the Chinese language authorities organized a seminar in Urumqi to convey its narrative of the area. Throughout discussions about “telling the story of Xinjiang properly,” contributors emphasised reaching abroad audiences by transmitting the narrative in languages aside from Mandarin Chinese language.
![ENG_UYG_AmbassadorsVisit_08112023.1.jpg Hector Dorbecker, counselor for economic-commercial and financial affairs at the Embassy of Mexico in Beijing, tries to play dutar, a long-necked two-stringed lute, in Jiayi village of Xinhe county, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Aug. 2, 2023. Credit: Zhao Chenjie/Xinhua via Getty Images](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/foreign-diplomats-08112023160729.html/eng_uyg_ambassadorsvisit_08112023-1.jpg/@@images/fe34d024-dd1f-4b55-8463-af353af1170a.jpeg)
In late December 2018, a delegation of diplomats from Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, and 12 different international locations, all stationed in Beijing, visited Xinjiang on an agenda organized by the Chinese language authorities, which introduced “re-education” camps as voluntary vocational coaching facilities.
The Chinese language authorities has additionally sponsored international journalists on journeys to Xinjiang.
Chinese language officers organized for a gaggle of journalists from 10 international media retailers to tour main cities in Xinjiang in April 2021 to defend its insurance policies within the area and dispel reviews of human rights abuses.
In August 2019, Chinese language Communist Celebration officers hosted one other group of international journalists, most of whom labored for state broadcasters from international locations alongside the Silk Street financial belt, placing them up in fancy lodges whereas they toured Xinjiang and lecturing them on China’s measures to cease terrorism and separatism within the area.
The officers took the journalists to some mosques nonetheless left standing although authorities had closed, demolished, or was museums many others in Xinjiang, to a “re-education” camp they stated was a vocational coaching heart, and to exhibits the place younger Uyghurs danced and sang.
rights activists weigh in
Henryk Szadziewski, director of analysis on the Uyghur Human Rights Challenge, stated the organized visits are “a constant tactic employed by the Chinese language authorities to hide their wrongdoings” throughout which they use others to amplify their messages.
“Whether or not it’s a western vlogger doing a journey weblog or diplomats from international locations which can be pleasant, or that depend on China when it comes to its economic system, or [face] threats or stress, they put out this message that Xinjiang is now secure and affluent as a area,” he stated.
Whereas China invitations individuals from nations sympathetic to its perspective to go to Xinjiang, it has rejected requests by the U.S. and human rights teams that unbiased investigators be capable of go to the area.
Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, stated all visits to Xinjiang by international diplomats had been designed by China to cowl up rights abuses.
“If every part is okay, why not let in unbiased worldwide investigators, significantly given the mountain of proof of a number of the most severe crimes underneath worldwide regulation?” she requested.
“So, it’s not clear why some individuals received to go and others don’t until Beijing has one thing to cover,” she stated.
Sayragul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh who testified in regards to the abuse she witnessed whereas detained in a “re-education” camp in Xinjiang, cautioned visiting diplomats in opposition to ignoring China’s rights abuses within the area and changing into accomplices to them.
“They know and might see China is mendacity, however they’re turning a blind eye,” she stated. “These are the international locations that depend on China, however for them, it is a uncommon alternative. They’re going there to assist unfold propaganda and canopy up the crimes China has dedicated.”
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matt Reed.