According to western media, the United States and several Western allies presented a proposal on Monday for the UN’s human rights body to hold a special debate over reported rights abuses and violations against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in China’s western Xinjiang region. According to the details, a group of western nations including Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden were behind a draft resolution at the Human Rights Council that calls for a debate on Xinjiang at the council’s next session in early 2023. As reported, the western allies had made a thoroughly calculated technical move at the global forum and floated a resolution just two days before the expiry of the deadline for such drafts, so there should be enough time for diplomats to discuss, fine-tune and possibly vote on the subject before the session’s end while proving the adversary less space to prevent or neutralized western plan.
Historically, Xinjiang, the Muslim-majority Northwestern Chinese province had been a hot cake for western nations and government-sponsored media, think tanks as well as Human Rights Groups due to alleged human rights violations by the Chinese state institutions over the past decades. In fact, western governments support such issues in other countries across the globe in the name of human rights, democracy as well as freedom of expression and kept inflamed at a moderate level so these matters can be used against the concerned governments when deemed feasible. Xinjiang became the topmost priority for the United States after Taiwan in the backdrop of ongoing US-China global competition instigated by former President Trump in late 2017. The United States and other western nations are hosting Chinese dissidents in their countries, financing anti-China groups, and propagating their narrative through print and digital media to build pressure on the Chinese government regarding its internal issues including Xinjiang, Tibit, Hong Kong prodemocracy activists as well as Taiwan dispute.
In fact, the western allies had been pushing global human rights organizations and UN Human Rights Council to monitor and report on the alleged human rights violations in the Chinese Muslim majority region. There had been tremendous pressure on former UN human rights Chief Michelle Bachelet to issue a report on alleged human rights abuses in the Chinese western province which she released last month that suggested crimes against humanity and other wrongs took place against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities as part of China’s campaign against violent extremism in Xinjiang.
Presently, based on the recent report issued by the UN Human rights body, the western nations planned to muster enough political capital to present and push through a resolution on Xinjiang before the council’s current session ends on October 7. If approved, the resolution would mark the first time that human rights concerns in China have been formally put on the council’s agenda and western allies would be able to hold China accountable for its actions and likely to be in a position to use stronger tools in the council’s arsenal to monitor rights abuses, convene independent experts to scrutinize country’s activities and can pave the path to further possibilities under the provisions of the global forum. Although western nations have set the stage to encircle China over the Xinjiang issue through their latest move, hence Chinese response will illustrate the success of their motion.
