Antony Blinken highlights China’s Uygurs as victims of ‘genocide’ at US human rights report launch
- America’s top diplomat pledges to keep raising atrocities with responsible governments days before he is expected to meet senior officials in Beijing
- ‘Countries that respect human rights are more likely to be peaceful, prosperous, stable,’ says Blinken
“Countries that respect human rights are more likely to be peaceful, prosperous, stable,” America’s top diplomat said.
China, the report’s preface stated, “continues to carry out genocide, crimes against humanity, forced labour and other human-rights violations against predominantly Muslim Uygurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups”.
Blinken’s remarks come ahead of his trip to Beijing and Shanghai later this week, where he plans to raise the US’s concerns over China’s human rights record, its “unfair economic and trade practices” and the global consequences of the country’s “industrial overcapacity”.
The secretary will “raise human rights at the highest levels and in the clearest way” while in China, said Robert Gilchrist, a senior official at the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, on Monday.
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“The strength of democracies like ours is that we address those shortcomings, those imperfections openly, without sweeping them under the rug,” he said.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.
As in recent years, the report, which covers events from the previous calendar year, devoted some of its longest sections to China.
In response to the report, Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said: “China is willing to engage in exchanges with the US on human rights, as long as there is mutual respect.”
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But “we firmly oppose interference in China’s internal affairs under the pretext of human rights”, he added.
Beijing has repeatedly denied Washington’s accusations of human-rights violations, particularly those concerning the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
In recent years, China has issued its own report on US human-rights violations citing American racial discrimination, wealth polarisation and gun and police violence, among others.
“The United States, founded on colonialism, racist slavery and inequality in labour, possession and distribution, has further fallen into a quagmire of system failure,” the State Council Information Office wrote in March last year.
American politicians “wantonly use human rights as a weapon to attack other countries, creating confrontation, division and chaos in the international community”, it added.