By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS – Dozens of nations continued pressure on China at UN over claims of rights abuses by Uyghur Muslims, and other minorities within the country’s Xinjiang. The accusations prompted an angry response from China’s U.N. envoy.

Confrontations about Xinjiang have become a common occurrence at the U.N. General Assembly (New York) and U.N. Human Rights Council (Geneva).

French U.N. read a portion of the statement. Ambassador Nicolas de Rivière to the General Assembly rights committee – 43 countries voiced concern about increasing “reports of widespread and systematic human rights violations,” accusing China of detaining more than 1 million people in camps.

The abuse allegations were “reports documenting torture, cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, punishment, forcible sterilization, or sexual or gender-based violence and forced seperation of children”.

Beijing denied all allegations of Uyghur abuse. It described the camps in its official statement as vocational training facilities for combating religious extremism.

In a partially read statement to the rights committee, China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun retorted.

“To America and other countries, your desperate attempts to conceal your horrible human rights record won’t work,” he stated.

He added, “No matter what number of times they are repeated, lies remain lies.” You are using human rights to pretext political maneuvering in order provoke confrontation.

Michelle Bachelet, U.N. chief for human rights has been negotiating access in Xinjiang ever since September 2018. In June, she told the Human Rights Council that she was hoping to reach an agreement on terms to allow her to visit Xinjiang this year in order to review reports about serious violations of Muslim Uyghurs.

In June, over 40 countries demanded that China grant Bachelet immediate access at the Human Rights Council.