Chinese President, Xi Jinping, told the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, that no country can, from “arrogance”, teach others how to defend human rights.
Chinese President, Xi Jinpingand the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, who visits the Asian giant until Friday, held a virtual meeting a day following new publications appeared documenting life inside “re-education” camps in the western region of Xinjiang.
Hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are or would have been held in that area.
China has “a human rights development path that (…) fits its national conditions”Said Xi, who asked that the issue not be “politicized, instrumentalized or treated with double standards”, according to the state network CCTV.
The president did defend the “commitment” of the Communist Party to “protect human rights” under the premise that the formation -of which he is secretary general- has as its objective “the happiness of the Chinese people” and “the modernization” of the nation.
“We have been fighting for the interests of our people for more than a hundred years. The human rights of the Chinese have unprecedented guarantees,” said the president.
China, Xi added, “will continue to develop” what he called “full process people’s democracy”, a term with which the communist regime tries to defend that its system of government is also a democracy, but different from Western ones.
On the sidelines, he stated that no one has to teach China how to defend human rights and that these “should not be politicized” to “interfere” in the internal affairs of other countries.
“And what is not at all necessary are arrogant professors with other countries, much less politicizing these issues,” said the Chinese leader in veiled reference to the United States and the European Union (EU), who sanctioned officials and Chinese entities last year on account of abuses in Xinjiang.
China has “its own way”
The politician justified that the “historical and specific conditions of each country are different”, as well as their levels of economic and social development, with which each one must “explore their own way of dealing with human rights.”
“Deviating from reality and copying models from other countries is not only unacceptable, it has catastrophic consequences, ultimately causing people to suffer. There are many examples of this, ”he said.
According to Xinhua, Bachelet assured that she believes that this visit will help her “better understand” China: “I admire China’s efforts and achievements in eradicating poverty and protecting human rights or progressing in its economic and social development. . Also its role to safeguard multilateralism and to deal with global challenges such as climate change”.
“We hope to strengthen communication to promote the global cause of human rights,” he added, according to the state agency.
In recent years, Beijing has faced numerous accusations that say it has launched a massive campaign to arrest and deprive hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs of liberty with the argument of stopping the spread of jihadist ideas within that community, made up of by regarding 13 million people.
Beijing, which has sometimes described the accusations as “the lie of the century”, argues that it did not use re-education camps but “vocational training centers” as part of a program to improve the region’s economy and society, which has suffered in recent decades jihadist terrorist attacks.
Visit in “covid bubble” and without press
Bachelet’s visit has been clouded by the publication of new documents, the product of a leak, documenting life inside the re-education camps in Xinjiangwhere hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are or would have been held.
These even show a fragment of a speech by a local party chief in which He urges the guards to shoot to kill any detainee who tries to walk away from the centers.
In addition, several Western organizations and governments have also questioned the usefulness of Bachelet’s visit, which takes place inside a “bubble” without contact with the outside -officially, due to the pandemic- and without access for the press. .
Several NGOs have warned in recent weeks that China will not give Bachelet independent access to Xinjiang and expressed their fear that Beijing will use the visit for propaganda purposes.
The visit, they indicated, is not an excuse for the office led by Bachelet to continue delaying the publication of its report on the abuses suffered by the Uyghurs, which the High Commissioner herself confirmed was regarding to end in September 2021.
Xi, for his part, spoke of “double standards” when accusing China and criticized that others seek to “interfere in the internal affairs of other countries under the pretext of human rights.”
“We have to promote them from an inclusive, fair and reasonable direction,” said the president, adding that his country will continue to “support” the “active efforts” of the United Nations and that it will cooperate in this matter but from “mutual respect and equality ” in order to “expand consensus, reduce differences, learn from each other and make progress together”.
