Representatives of permanent missions of eight countries to the UN Office in Geneva, including diplomats from Russia, Belarus, Cuba, Pakistan and Egypt, arrived on Saturday for a visit in China over the so-called "reeducation camps" in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region criticized by the international community, local media reported
BEIJING (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th February, 2019) Representatives of permanent missions of eight countries to the UN Office in Geneva, including diplomats from Russia, Belarus, Cuba, Pakistan and Egypt, arrived on Saturday for a visit in China over the so-called "reeducation camps" in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region criticized by the international community, local media reported.
According to the People's Daily newspaper (Renmin Ribao), the delegation arrived in China at the request of the Chinese Foreign Ministry and will stay in Xinjiang on Saturday-Tuesday. Deputy Director of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Jiang Jianguo and Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Yucheng met the delegation in Beijing.
Jiang said during the meeting that since 1990s, Xinjiang extremists, terrorists and separatists staged thousands of terror attacks in the autonomous region, which resulted in multiple casualties and caused significant material damage.
He pointed out that the Chinese authorities had created professional training facilities and education centers to prevent the spread of extremism.
"We have already achieved significant results. Within past 25 months, no terror attack was registered in Xinjiang. The sense of satisfaction, safety and welfare among local residents was boosted," Jiang added.
In August 2018, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination published a report stating that more than one million ethnic Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities were being detained in massive "no rights" "counter-extremism" camps and another two million were being held in "reeducation" camps.
In January, Shohrat Zakir, the chairman of the Xinjiang regional government and an Uyghur himself, stated that the United Nation's estimate of one million people was a "rumor" and that the facilities were temporary vocational training and educational facilities that had proven to be "extremely effective" in reducing extremism, teaching residents about the law and helping them learn Mandarin Chinese.
