The Chinese president, Xi Jining, urged today to maintain “social stability” in a visit to the Xinjiang region, in the northwest of the country, where the government is accused by the West of violations of the human rights of the Uyghurs and other ethnic groups. muslims
Xi “stressed that the maintenance of social stability must always be given top priority and we must use stability to ensure development,” the official CCTV television channel reported and the French news agency AFP replied.
According to the station, the president, who traveled to Urumqi, the capital of the region, assured that it was “necessary to combine the development of the anti-terrorist and anti-separatist fight with the drive to normalize the work of social stability and the rule of law.”
Xi also urged the authorities to “further promote the sinicization of Islam and effectively control illegal religious activities.”
“We must be more aware of the adversities and consolidate the social stability that has cost us so much to achieve,” he declared, in what was his first visit to the area since July, according to CCTV, replicated by AFP.
The Chinese government launched a series of measures in Xinjiang that caused friction between the country and the international community, especially the United States, which came to accuse Beijing of committing human rights violations and even genocide against the Uyghur population.
The Xinjiang region was the scene of bloody attacks against civilians, committed, according to the authorities, by separatists and Uyghur Islamists, the main ethnic group in the area.
According to several Western countries and independent organizations, China interned more than 1 million Uyghurs and members of other local Muslim ethnicities in “re-education camps,” and imposed “forced labor” and “sterilizations.”
China denies these accusations and presents these “camps” as “vocational training centers” to combat religious extremism.
A United Nations report last year determined that the Chinese government’s actions in the region could constitute “crimes against humanity” and urged it to follow the recommendations made to it, which was supported by Europe and the United States.
China denounced that the UN report alluding to alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang was a “political tool” against its government, which it described as “illegal” and “invalid.”
Source: Ambito
