Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) on Sunday defended detention camps in Xinjiang and Hong Kong’s new security legislation, brushing off human rights concerns raised by European nations and cautioning against interference in Chinese affairs.
Wang is on his first European tour since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, seeking to revive trade and relations strained by the resulting global health and economic crisis.
Speaking in Paris, Wang repeated the claim that all those sent to re-education centers in Xinjiang have been released and placed in employment — even as rights groups and families report continued detentions of Uighurs and the loss of contact with loved ones.
“The rights of all trainees in the education and training program, though their minds have been encroached by terrorism and extremism, have been fully guaranteed,” Wang told a conference at the French Institute of International Relations. “Now all of them have graduated, there is no one in the education and training center now. They all have found jobs.”
The Chinese government has detained an estimated 1 million or more members of ethnic Turkic minorities in Xinjiang, holding them in internment camps and prisons, where they are subjected to ideological discipline, forced to denounce their religion and language, and physically abused.
China has long suspected the Uighurs of harboring separatist tendencies because of their distinct culture, language and religion.
Asked about Hong Kong’s security legislation, Wang said: “We certainly couldn’t sit idly by and let the chaos go on, so we enacted a law maintaining national security that specifically suited Hong Kong’s situation.”
Wang called both issues internal Chinese affairs and said that foreign powers should not interfere.
At a meeting with Wang on Friday last week, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed “his strong concern about the situation in Hong Kong, and around human rights, notably the Uighurs, and the need for China to respect its international commitments,” Macron’s office said.
French Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian raised similar concerns, as did officials on other legs of Wang’s European trip, which includes visits to Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Germany.
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