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The Director for Global Advocacy at the United Nations, Zumretay Arkin, expressed her concerns over the genocidal and expansionist policies of China, and the Uyghur community, while speaking at a side event in Geneva.
While speaking at an event titled, What's Next After China's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on Thursday, the activist claimed that the situation in the Xinjiang region has not improved but has gone from bad to worse. In her statement, Arkin criticised China for detaining a Uyghur doctor, Dr Gulshan Abbas, sentenced to imprisonment of 20 years as a retaliation for her sister's activism against China in the US. While explaining the atrocities being inflicted upon the Uyghur community, the activist claimed that one out of 26 Uyghur individuals is imprisoned under vivid charges, making Xinjiang the region with the highest arrest rate in the world, with approximately 2,234 per 100,000 arrests. Arkin, in her statement, referred to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) review of China, which monitored the measures taken to implement the provisions of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. She further stated that several reports from the UN, ever since the CERD report, have found out that the living conditions of the Uyghur community continue to remain in steep decline. Previously, a 2022 UN statement of the CERD called on China to investigate all allegations of human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), including those of torture, ill-treatment, sexual violence, forced labor, enforced disappearances, and deaths in custody. That statement of CERD from 2022 demanded that China must release all individuals arbitrarily deprived of their liberty in the XUAR, whether in so-called vocational education and training centres (VETCs) or other detention facilities and to provide relatives of those detained or disappeared with detailed information about their status and well-being. In the same statement, Arkin also called upon the international community and the Global South to double down on its efforts, holding China responsible for its genocidal activities in East Turkistan. She also added that countries and the UN need to stop treating China with double standards and special privileges, as China should be held to the same standard as any other state that is violating human rights. (ANI)
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