Chinese authorities on Tuesday (May 25) condemned the establishment of an independent Uighur tribunal in Britain, accusing the civil society group of setting up a pretext to smear Xinjiang and label it a non-existent genocide. However, the World Uighur Congress, an international organization of Uighurs in exile, responded that the tribunal would proceed on the basis of law and evidence and give Uighurs a chance to get a fair trial.
Xu Guixiang, a spokesman for the government of China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region, called the independent Uighur court an illegal tribunal set up by the United States and Western anti-China forces at a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday. Xu Guixiang said the Uighur Independent Court’s hearing of lies was a “serious desecration of the real victims of genocide.
The AP report said the Uighur Independence Tribunal, which has no government background at all, is presided over by British barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice, who served as prosecutor in the war crimes trial of former Serbian President Milosevic at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
The Uighur Independence Tribunal was officially established on September 3, 2020.
The systematic persecution of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang by the Chinese authorities has generated strong reactions after it came to light internationally. Many countries and organizations view the political brainwashing and systematic persecution of millions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang by Chinese Xinjiang authorities in the name of counterterrorism as an act of genocide. Many countries, including the United States and Europe, have condemned China’s persecution of Uyghurs and have taken sanctions against relevant Chinese officials and organizations.
Chinese officials at first vehemently denied this, but later acknowledged the existence of buildings where Uyghurs were held, but argued that these were not detention camps but vocational training centers designed to teach vocational skills to Uyghurs and help them find jobs. As international pressure intensified, Chinese authorities further admitted that the training centers were established out of a need to combat terrorism and to eradicate extremism from Uyghurs’ minds through education.
In the past few months, international awareness of the Xinjiang issue has gained rapid momentum, and the impact of the forced labor issues raised by Xinjiang cotton has grown, with many major international companies saying they refuse to accept Chinese goods related to Xinjiang cotton. Those technology companies involved in the design and production of products to spy on the Uyghurs have also been subject to international sanctions.
In an interview with the Central News Agency on Tuesday, Dilishati explained the reasons for the establishment of the independent Uighur court, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency. He said China is a party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and that China’s grave and systematic violations against the Uyghurs meet the convention’s definition of “genocide. However, China’s reservation makes the possibility of prosecuting China before international courts and other tribunals remote.
Since “there is virtually no realistic chance that a duly constituted tribunal of any country or international organization would accept these charges,” Dirichati said, “the Uighur tribunal will proceed on the basis of the evidence and the law, giving the Uighurs the opportunity to obtain an authoritative and fair trial. “
Dirishati said the so-called education and training center “is a veritable concentration camp. China has committed crimes against the Uighur people, including murder, enslavement, unwarranted imprisonment, torture, rape and other sexual violence, forced birth control, forced disappearances, removal of children from their parents, forced marriages and forced organ harvesting.
Dilishati said, “The difference between it [concentration camps] and prisons is that prisons go through some so-called judicial process before inhumanely torturing Uyghurs; concentration camps simply omit all judicial processes and put people in arbitrary and forced detention, forced political brainwashing, and even inhumane torture.”
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