China’s ambassador in Geneva warned Friday that Beijing’s cooperation with the UN rights office was “in danger” after it published a report listing serious abuses in the Xinjiang region.
“We cannot conduct cooperation as if nothing happened when we were hurt by this exercise,” ambassador Chen Xu told reporters in a virtual briefing organized by the ACANU association of UN correspondents.
Beijing has made no secret of its displeasure with the report, which was released minutes before former UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet left office last week and warned of possible crimes against humanity in the far-western Xinjiang region.
The report brought the UN seal to allegations long made by campaigners and others, who accuse Beijing of a litany of abuses in Xinjiang, including detaining more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslims and forcibly sterilizing women.
Beijing has vehemently rejected such charges and criticized the report, accusing the UN of becoming a “thug and accomplice of the US and the West”.
Chen stressed that Beijing had expressed its willingness to deepen cooperation with the UN rights office during Bachelet’s visit to China — the first by a UN rights chief in 17 years — last May.
