Mohammed bin Salman fails to raise issue of rights violations against ethnic minority in his meeting with China’s president
Vakkas Doğantekin | 23.02.2019
By Vakkas Dogantekin
ANKARA
Saudi
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman turned a blind eye to the plight of
China’s Uighur Muslims when he met Friday with President Xi Jinping in
Beijing.
The Uighur community both
inside and outside China had expected bin Salman, the de facto ruler of
Saudi Arabia and custodian of Islam’s holiest sites, to raise the issue
of China’s human rights violations against ethnic Uighurs.
Instead, he chose to side with China.
"We
respect and support China's right to take counter-terrorism and
de-extremism measures to safeguard national security. We stand ready to
strengthen cooperation with China," bin Salman said, according to
China’s state-run Xinhua news agency.
Plight of Uighurs
China’s
Xinjiang region is home to around 10 million Uighurs. The Turkic Muslim
group, which makes up around 45 percent of Xinjiang’s population, has
long accused China’s authorities of cultural, religious and economic
discrimination.
Up to 1 million
people, or about 7 percent of the Muslim population in Xinjiang, have
been incarcerated in an expanding network of “political re-education”
camps, according to U.S. officials and UN experts.
In
a report last September, Human Rights Watch accused the Chinese
government of a “systematic campaign of human rights violations” against
Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.
According
to the 117-page report, the Chinese government conducted “mass
arbitrary detention, torture and mistreatment” of Uighur Turks in the
region.
Turkey's position
Turkey
earlier this month slammed China’s systematic assimilation policy for
Uighur Turks, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy calling it “a
great embarrassment for humanity".
"It
is no longer a secret that more than one million Uighur Turks, who are
exposed to arbitrary arrest, are subjected to torture and political
brainwashing in concentration centers and prisons," Aksoy said.
Turkey
has urged China’s authorities to respect the fundamental human rights
of Uighur Turks and shut down the concentration camps, Aksoy said.
"We
also call on the international community and UN Secretary General to
take effective steps to end the human tragedy in Xinjiang," he added.
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