{"id":4466,"date":"2018-11-14T19:39:09","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T19:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2018\/11\/14\/beijing-dismisses-hearsay-about-its-internment-muslims\/"},"modified":"2018-11-14T19:39:09","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T19:39:09","slug":"beijing-dismisses-hearsay-about-its-internment-muslims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/beijing-dismisses-hearsay-about-its-internment-muslims\/","title":{"rendered":"Beijing dismisses \u2018hearsay\u2019 about its internment of Muslims"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Beijing \u2014 China defended its internment of Muslims in the country\u2019s north-west as a terror-prevention measure on Tuesday, calling on the international community to reject \u201chearsay\u201d and believe its official line.<\/p>\n

Up to a million Uighurs and other Chinese Turkic-speaking minority groups have been placed in political re-education camps in the Xinjiang region, according to a group of experts cited by the UN.<\/p>\n

After originally denying the existence of the centres, Beijing has repeatedly described the camps as \u201cvocational training centres\u201d that were built to help people drawn to extremism to stay away from terrorism and allow them to be re-integrated into society.<\/p>\n

But the programme has faced rising criticism outside the country \u2014 notably from the US and human rights groups. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope our journalist friends and our other foreign friends will take into consideration the information and briefings on the situation given by the Chinese authorities,\u201d said China\u2019s foreign minister Wang Yi. \u201cRumours and hearsay should not be believed,\u201d he said standing next to his German counterpart Heiko Maas at a press conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite clear that the government in Xinjiang knows best what is happening in Xinjiang \u2014 not other people and third-party organisations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics say China is seeking to assimilate Xinjiang\u2019s minority population and suppress religious and cultural practices that conflict with Communist ideology and the dominant Han culture. Former inmates of the camps say they were detained for having long beards or wearing the veil.<\/p>\n

Attacks attributed to Uighurs have left hundreds dead over the last few years in China, many of them in Xinjiang, where Beijing says its concerned about a rise in Islamic radicalism. The authorities have put in place intrusive measures of security \u2014  ubiquitous surveillance cameras, DNA sampling, home visits by officials and GPS trackers in cars.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe call this a combination of repression and prevention, but we place the priority on prevention. If it\u2019s done well, terrorism won\u2019t expand and take root. It’s the most effective way to combat terrorism,\u201d Wang Yi said.<\/p>\n

The German foreign minister did not mention the Xinjiang region at the press conference, but did say he had \u201cspoken on the question of human rights\u201d during his closed meeting with his Chinese counterpart. A debate on the situation in Xinjiang was held in the German parliament last Thursday.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s ambassador to Berlin expressed Beijing\u2019s \u201cprofound discontent\u201d and put in an official protest following the \u201cblatant interference\u201d in its \u201cdomestic affairs\u201d.<\/p>\n

AFP<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beijing \u2014 China defended its internment of Muslims in the country\u2019s north-west as a terror-prevention measure on Tuesday, calling on the international community to reject \u201chearsay\u201d and believe its official…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-4466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4466"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=4466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}