Certain Western countries do not truly care about Xinjiang residents' lives, but simply want to use human rights as an excuse to meddle in China's internal affairs, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Thursday, urging these countries to reflect on their own slaughter of indigenous people and tackle existing racism and other human rights problems. 

"They should reserve the hat of 'genocide' for themselves," ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a routine press conference. Zhao refuted the lies of "genocide" in Xinjiang by pointing out that the Uygur population has increased 12 times faster than the Han population in the region during 2010-18, and the life expectancy in the region has increased from 30 to 72 years over the past six decades. 

"Has anyone of you seen a 'genocide' like this?" Zhao asked.

A portrait of Ambassador Chen Xu Photo: Liu Xin/GT

Ambassador Chen Xu, China's Permanent Representative to the UN Office at Geneva, on Wednesday urged Western countries to stop abusing the UN Human Rights Council and using Xinjiang to meddle in China's internal affairs, but to focus on solving their own human rights problems.

Chen made the remarks at the high-level segment of the 46th Human Rights Council. 

The UK, European Union, Germany, US, Canada and a few others abused the platform to make groundless accusations against China and interfere in China's internal affairs, which China strongly opposes and categorically rejects, Chen said.

Turning a blind eye to facts, certain countries fabricated and spread lies about Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong in their vicious vilification of China. Their acts have aroused strong indignation from the Chinese people. Their attempts to smear China, undermine China's stability and contain China's development are doomed to fail. What they have done has only fully exposed the fact that, for them, human rights are nothing but a tool for political manipulation, the ambassador stressed.

Chen pointed out that if those countries truly care about human rights, they should not have started wars around the world that resulted in countless civilian casualties, broken families and displacement. They should not have shielded soldiers who committed war crimes overseas and killed innocent civilians. They should not have interfered in the internal affairs of other countries and undermined the peaceful lives of their people. 

To promote human rights, those countries should provide adequate technical and financial assistance to developing countries to help them achieve sustainable development, narrow the North-South gap and eradicate poverty and hunger on a global scale. They should abandon vaccine "nationalism" so as to ensure the fair global distribution of vaccines, Chen continued. 

Countries that truly care about human rights should put life first and take effective measures to prevent and control the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than shifting the blame to others. They should address deep-rooted human rights problems, such as racism, wealth gap, and police violence, and close immigration detention centers where immigrants are subjected to inhumane treatment, Chen said.

China urges the relevant countries to make real efforts to solve their own human rights problems, take part in international human rights dialogue and cooperation in a fair, objective and constructive manner, and stop interfering in other countries' internal affairs only to serve their own political agenda under the pretext of human rights, Chen stressed. 

Global Times