GENEVA: Amnesty International decried Thursday the “woefully inadequate” international response after the UN released a bombshell report last year detailing a litany of abuses in China’s Xinjiang province.
On the first anniversary of the report, Amnesty lamented that the international community, including parts of the United Nations, had “shied away from the kind of resolute steps needed to advance justice, truth and reparation for victims.”
The rights group singled out UN rights chief Volker Turk for failing to “clearly emphasize the urgent need for accountability for (China’s) alarming violations.”
His predecessor Michelle Bachelet released her long-delayed report on the situation in Xinjiang on August 31, 2022, just minutes before her term ended, after facing significant pressure from Beijing to withhold the document.
It detailed a string of violations against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, urging the world to pay “urgent attention” to the human rights situation in the far-western region.
The report — harshly criticized by Beijing — highlighted “credible” allegations of widespread torture, arbitrary detention and violations of religious and reproductive rights.
And it brought UN endorsement to long-running allegations that Beijing had detained of detaining more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslims and forcibly sterilized women, with possible crimes against humanity.
But UN Human Rights Council member states last October narrowly voted to reject even holding a debate on its contents.
Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has vowed to “personally continue engaging with the (Chinese) authorities” about the rights violations detailed in the report.
But Amnesty complained that his public follow-up had so far been lacking.
“We need national and international officials, including human rights officials such as the high commissioner, to use all levers at their disposal ... to seek meaningful change in China’s repressive policies,” said Sarah Brooks, Amnesty’s deputy regional director for China.
They should, she said, be “engaging in frank, evidence-based dialogue with the authorities about their human rights violations.”
Brooks highlighted that the anniversary of the report’s release came the same week as Chinese President Xi Jinping made a surprise visit to Xinjiang’s regional capital Urumqi, where he called for more curbs on “illegal religious activities.”
“The one-year anniversary of the (UN) report must be a call to action,” she said, stressing the urgent need for an independent international investigation into violations in Xinjiang.
“Families of those who have been arbitrarily detained, forcibly disappeared or mistreated want and deserve answers and accountability, not delays and compromises.”
Amnesty calls for action on rights in China’s Xinjiang
https://arab.news/5zeam
Amnesty calls for action on rights in China’s Xinjiang
- The rights group singled out UN rights chief Volker Turk for failing to “clearly emphasize the urgent need for accountability for (China’s) alarming violations”
Italian police fire tear gas as protesters clash near Winter Olympics hockey venue
- Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue
MILAN: Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday.
The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands against the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of US agents in Italy.
Police held off the violent demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink, after the skirmish. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including families with small children and students, had dispersed.
Earlier, a group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (a half-mile) from the Olympic Village that’s housing around 1,500 athletes.
Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue. A heavy police presence guarded the entire route.
There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.
The demonstration coincided with US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony on Friday.
He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, far from the protest, which also was against the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the US delegation.
US Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the US is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.
At the larger, peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent trees felled to build the new bobsled run in Cortina. A group of dancers performed to beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, one a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem.
“Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” read a banner by a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Association of Proletariat Excursionists organized the cutout trees.
“They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure project, citing urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass on debt to Italian taxpayers.
Homemade signs read “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the final one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”
The demonstration followed another last week when hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.
Like last week, demonstrators Saturday said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence, despite official statements that a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in US diplomatic territory, and not operational on the streets.
