A visit by EU ambassadors to the Xinjiang region of China has stalled over their request for access to jailed Uighur academic Ilham Tohti, a diplomatic source said yesterday.
China said it has since 2019 invited foreign diplomats and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to visit Xinjiang, where rights groups allege more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are detained in internment camps.
However, there has been little sign of progress.
A European diplomat told reporters that it was because the mission wants to visit Tohti, a Uighur economist jailed for life on separatism charges in 2014.
He received the Sakharov Prize — the EU’s top human rights award — in 2019.
“Negotiations are in a stalemate because of Tohti and other conditions,” the diplomat said. “I don’t think they are going soon.”
Chinese Ambassador to the EU Zhang Ming (張明) on Tuesday said “almost everything had been arranged” for EU member states’ ambassadors to visit Xinjiang.
However, it had snagged on “unacceptable requests,” he added.
“They insist on a meeting with one criminal convicted by Chinese law,” he said. “This is unacceptable, I’m so sorry.”
China has denied allegations of abuse involving Uighurs in Xinjiang and said that all inmates have “graduated” from “vocational training centers,” which it claims have helped stamp out extremism in the region and raise incomes.
A delegation of three EU officials who took part in a carefully organized Xinjiang visit in January 2019 previously said they believed the people they met in a “training center” were reciting a dictated speech.
Zhang added that Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) extended an invitation to Bachelet on March 7, after she late last month called for an “independent and comprehensive assessment of the human rights situation” in Xinjiang.
He said that Xinjiang is “open to foreign diplomats, journalists and tourists.”
All foreign journalists have faced extensive harassment and surveillance from Chinese authorities when attempting to report from Xinjiang over the past year, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China has said.
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
RSS