China has turned its northwestern province of Xinjiang into a “no-rights zone” and a “massive internment camp” for the Muslim Uyghur community, a United Nations meeting on human rights was told. The issue of the treatment of Uyghurs was raised at the UN meeting by Gay McDougall, vice-chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, who said she was “deeply concerned” by reports from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) that the Uyghurs were being sent to re-education camps in the name of fighting religious extremism. China is yet to officially respond to the allegations. According to reports, China’s lead representative to the committee, Yu Jianhua, said he would respond on Monday. “We have taken careful notes,” he said. The province, China’s largest and where Uyghurs make up about 45 per cent of the population, is designated as an autonomous region, like Tibet. Multiple news reports from the province and abroad have said that hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been packed off to camps to “re-educated” in the past several months. In many cases, Uyghur families have been separated after family members, often males, were sent to the camps. McDougall put on record her concerns after reading reports that China had “turned the [Xinjiang] Uyghur Autonomous Region into something that resembles a massive internment camp”. Some Uyghurs were being “treated as enemies of the state based solely on their ethno-religious identity,” she said. “We are deeply concerned at the many numerous and credible reports that we have received that in the name of combating religious extremism and maintaining social stability (China) has changed the Uyghur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internship camp that is shrouded in secrecy, a sort of ‘no rights zone,” McDougall was quoted by Reuters as saying at the start of a two-day meeting on China. “All of these detainees have had their due-process rights violated. Most have never been charged with an offence, tried in a court of law or afforded an opportunity to challenge the illegality of their detention. Many just disappear. Their relatives never know what happened to them,” she said. McDougall said at least two million were in the camps but did not back it up by mentioning the source. According to the BBC, in April, Laura Stone, a senior diplomat in the US State Department, said tens of thousands of people had been detained in “re-education centres” amid a government crackdown. China’s ministry of foreign affairs (MFA) spokesperson had responded by saying that “everyone can see that people of all ethnicities in Xinjiang live and work in peace and contentment and enjoy peaceful and progressing lives”. The Chinese government has consistently blamed Islamic extremists for carrying out violent attacks targeting government offices and police stations in Xinjiang. “Xinjiang might be sparsely populated, but Beijing has made tremendous strides to develop northwestern China and the results appear remarkable,” a state media report said last year. “The regional GDP (gross domestic product) has enjoyed an average annual increase - 9.3 percent from 2012 to 2016; RMB752.9bn (US$114bn) - 2012, to RMB 965bn (US$140bn) – 2016,” it said.<doc-sep>GENEVA — China issued a blanket denial on Monday of accusations from United Nations experts that it had detained more than a million ethnic Uighur Muslims in re-education camps in the western region of Xinjiang. Beijing has progressively tightened security in Xinjiang since an eruption of violence there in 2009, but the crackdown has escalated since 2016, when a new Communist Party secretary for the region began widely expanding security services and surveillance. Gay McDougall, a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, spoke of the region on Friday as becoming “something resembling a massive internment camp,” with mass detention, re-education and disappearances. At a hearing in Geneva on Monday, a 49-strong Chinese delegation met questions from the committee with flat contradiction.<doc-sep>(This version of Aug. 10 story corrects name of expert in paragraph 12, fixes typographical error in paragraph 3) Slideshow ( 3 images ) GENEVA (Reuters) - A United Nations human rights panel said on Friday that it had received many credible reports that 1 million ethnic Uighurs in China are held in what resembles a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy.” Gay McDougall, a member of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, cited estimates that 2 million Uighurs and Muslim minorities were forced into “political camps for indoctrination” in the western Xinjiang autonomous region. “We are deeply concerned at the many numerous and credible reports that we have received that in the name of combating religious extremism and maintaining social stability (China) has changed the Uighur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy, a sort of ‘no rights zone’,” she told the start of a two-day regular review of China’s record, including Hong Kong and Macao. China has said that Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists who plot attacks and stir up tensions between the mostly Muslim Uighur minority who call the region home and the ethnic Han Chinese majority. A Chinese delegation of some 50 officials made no comment on her remarks at the Geneva session that is scheduled to continue on Monday. The U.S. mission to the United Nations said on Twitter that it was “deeply troubled by reports of an ongoing crackdown on Uighurs and other Muslims in China.” “We call on China to end their counterproductive policies and free all of those who have been arbitrarily detained,” the U.S. mission said. The allegations came from multiple sources, including activist group Chinese Human Rights Defenders, which said in a report last month that 21 percent of all arrests recorded in China in 2017 were in Xinjiang. Earlier, Yu Jianhua, China’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said it was working toward equality and solidarity among all ethnic groups. But McDougall said that members of the Uighur community and other Muslims were being treated as “enemies of the state” solely on the basis of their ethno-religious identity. More than 100 Uighur students who returned to China from countries including Egypt and Turkey had been detained, with some dying in custody, she said. Yemhelhe Mint Mohamed, a panel member, referred to “arbitrary and mass detention of almost 1 million Uighurs” and asked the Chinese delegation, “What is the level of religious freedom available now to Uighurs in China, what legal protection exists for them to practice their religion?” Panelists also raised reports of mistreatment of Tibetans in the autonomous region, including inadequate use of the Tibetan language in the classroom and at court proceedings. “The U.N. body maintained its integrity, the government got a very clear message,” Golok Jigme, a Tibetan monk and former prisoner living in exile, told Reuters at the meeting.<doc-sep>Officials said the newly-built Weizhou Grand Mosque had not been given proper building permits. However, human rights groups say there is increasing official hostility towards Muslims in China, where religious activities remain tightly controlled by the government.<doc-sep>
A United Nations panel on racism has expressed concern at reports of discrimination against the Uyghur community in China, citing estimates that 2 million people have been forced into “political camps for indoctrination” in the Xinjiang region, Reuters reported on Saturday. Several “credible reports” suggest that China has made the region a “massive internship camp shrouded in secrecy, a sort of no-rights zone”, in the name of fighting religious extremism, Gay McDougall, a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, said on Friday. She made the remark at a two-day meeting in Geneva. The north-western Xinjiang region is home to more than 10 million members of the Uyghur Muslim minority group. McDougall said members of the Uyghur community and other Muslims were being treated as “enemies of the state” solely because of their ethno-religious identity. Dozens of Uyghur students who returned to China from other countries had been detained, and some were dying in custody, she alleged. Human rights groups have informed the committee about reports of mass imprisonment of minorities in camps where inmates are forced to swear loyalty to the Communist Party and President Xi Jinping, the BBC reported. The World Uyghur Congress has said that inmates are held indefinitely without charge, and are poorly fed and tortured. China is expected to respond to the remarks when the session resumes on Monday. The country is represented by a delegation of around 50 officials. Beijing has earlier said that Islamist militants and separatists pose a serious threat to Xinjiang autonomous region. However, it denies the existence of the camps where the minorities are allegedly held. China had refuted the claim by a United States diplomat in April that thousands of people had been held in “re-education centres” in a government crackdown. The United States’ mission to the UN said it was “deeply troubled” by the reports. “We call on China to end their counterproductive policies and free all of those who have been arbitrarily detained,” the mission said on Twitter.