China denounces Uyghur Tribunal as a ‘farce’ filled with ‘actors’
An independent tribunal to determine whether China’s treatment of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region constitutes genocide is a “farce” complete with “actors” serving as witnesses, Chinese officials said on Friday.
The tribunal’s first set of hearings, conducted in London in early June, was led by prominent British barrister Geoffrey Nice. Nice led the international prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic, the disgraced former Serbian president accused of crimes against humanity for his involvement in the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo that tore apart the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
The Uyghur Tribunal has no government backing, but organizers hope the evidence revealed during the hearings will galvanize international support for halting human rights abuse in Xinjiang. But Chinese officials have denounced the hearings, recently calling them a case of “recruiting actors in a farce to repeat old lies.”
Elijan Anayt, a Xinjiang government spokesperson, said during a press briefing on Friday the tribunal “followed the presumption of guilt” with “fabricated evidence.” Another spokesperson, Xu Guixiang, said: “Any so-called ‘verdict’ or ‘ruling’ of the ‘tribunal’ is nothing more than a piece of waste paper.”
The tribunal heard witnesses from overseas Uyghur communtiies who revealed fresh evidence of human rights abuses in Xinjiang by Beijing, including mass torture, rape, forced labor and a range of other abuses.
Beijing has been accused of locking up more than a million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in concentration camps where they are forced to pay allegiance to Beijing and denounce their own culture. But Chinese officials have described the camps as counseling centers used to treat radical Uyghurs with extremist thoughts.
It has also labelled the World Uyghur Congress, an overseas Uyghur rights advocacy group that has supported the tribunal’s launch, as a terrorist organization. Anayt said in the press briefing that the “so-called victims” of suppression in Xinjiang had actually committed serious crimes, including drug trafficking, murder, rape and robbery.
At least two members of the tribunal panel, including Nice and legal expert Baroness Helena Kennedy, have been sanctioned by Beijing for their involvement.
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