Chinese state media hit out yesterday at Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s criticism of the situation in Xinjiang, describing his genocide comments as “irresponsible and groundless.”
An editorial in the English-language China Daily said Erdogan should take back his criticism that Beijing had failed to stop the violence that has blighted the remote northwest region since ethnic unrest broke out on July 5.
“Mr Erdogan’s description of the riots in Xinjiang as ‘a kind of genocide’ is an irresponsible and groundless accusation,” the paper said.
“The fact that 137 of the 184 persons killed in the riots are Han Chinese speaks volumes for the nature of the event,” it said.
The editorial repeated the government’s position that the initial violence was orchestrated by outsiders looking to separate the giant region of mountains and deserts from the rest of China.
“Chinese leaders are the last people who want to see happenings like these in the largest ethnic autonomous region,” the article said, adding that Erdogan’s comments constituted “interference in China’s internal affairs.”
China says 184 people were killed and 1,680 injured on July 5, in the worst ethnic violence to hit the country in decades.
The initial unrest saw Muslim Uighurs attack Han Chinese, the government and witnesses said. Thousands of Han Chinese retaliated in the following days, arming themselves with makeshift weapons and marching through parts of Urumqi vowing vengeance against the Uighurs.
Xinjiang is home to eight million Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who have long said they suffer repression and discrimination under Chinese rule.
Erdogan has been the most vocal foreign leader to criticize China’s actions in Xinjiang and on Saturday urged Beijing to stop the “assimilation” of the region’s Uighur minority.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
RSS