The US and Canadian embassies in China said that Chinese censors removed its posts about a UN report on human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang province.
On Twitter, the embassies said that it shared Canada’s response to the report on WeChat and Weibo but the posts were removed. The posts were translations of the English-language response to the report by Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly in Mandarin. She said, among other things, that the findings in the report reflect “credible accounts of grave human rights violations taking place in Xinjiang.”
The report, authored by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, called for “urgent attention” from the international community to address the human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The report said there are credible reports of arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment in Xinjiang, which Beijing justifies by claiming it is fighting terrorism and extremism.
On Thursday, China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said the report was “illegal, null and void” and called it a “patchwork of disinformation,” and added that the US attempted to discredit China.
