French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday regretted China’s refusal to send a UN-led international observer mission to Xinjiang to examine the situation of Uighurs.
In an interview with Brut Media on Friday, Macron said, “We cannot accept a permanent member of the United Nations who refuses to allow the UN and non-governmental organizations to go to the site to find a solution to the problem.”
In late June, French Foreign Minister Jean-Pierre Le Drian proposed that an international mission of independent observers, under the auspices of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Barclay, travel to Xinjiang, China, to investigate the situation of Uighur Muslims.
The European Union also proposed in September that an independent international mission be sent to Xinjiang. Beijing is accused of committing massive human rights abuses in Xinjiang, where millions of Muslims, mainly Uighurs, are held in concentration camps for so-called “vocational training.
China claimed at the time that it was willing to accept such an international observer mission, but refused to accept such a “presumption of guilt” investigation.
When pressed on how France might act on the situation of the Uighurs, Macron said he had already spoken to Chinese President Xi Jinping about the issue. Macron added: “I am not going to go to war with China on this subject. My duty is to talk to Xi Jinping, to talk to the Chinese authorities, to talk to them when they come to France, or when I visit China.”
“And then the EU has to have an overall strategy on this, and again, if we are going to face China forcefully, it has to be clear and unambiguous. There also has to be a little bit of realistic geopolitics, which is that the EU as a whole is what matters. We, the Europeans, we have to defend our values.”
Macron stressed that only the EU as a whole can solve the problem if it faces China. First, the EU insisted on sending an international fact-finding mission to Xinjiang. As for the question involving contingent sanctions against China, Macron believes that the issue can only be looked at at the EU level.
In September, President Macron had already said that Beijing’s crackdown on Uighurs was “unacceptable” and that France “condemns it in the strongest terms. In that speech, Macron also cited numerous “eyewitness” accusations of “concentration camps,” “mass repression,” and the existence of “concentration camps” in Xinjiang. “Forced Labor”.
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