China grilled over human rights record at UN
"Universal Periodic Reviews" are held at the UN every five years to address a country's human rights record. More than 160 countries provided assessment of China's record, ranging from praise to condemnation.
China underwent rare scrutiny of its human rights record at the United Nations on Tuesday.
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which all UN member states must undergo every five years, focused on Xinjiang, a remote region where China has incarcerated more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities and is accused of crimes against humanity.
The political situation in Hong Kong, where Beijing has imposed a strict set of "security" laws, was also taken into consideration.
More than 160 countries addressed the hearing in Geneva, Switzerland, and each only had 45 seconds to speak.
China once again denied any allegations of human rights abuses.
"We embarked on a path of human rights development that is in keeping with the trend of the times and appropriate to China's national conditions and scored historic achievements in this process," China's UN Ambassador Chen Xu said through an interpreter at the meeting.
Uyghur and Tibetan groups each held small protests outside the UN offices in Geneva.
Western countries slam Beijing
Canada's representative to the UN, Leslie Norton, called on China to end "all forms of enforced disappearances targeting human rights defenders, ethnic minorities and Falun Gong practitioners" and to repeal the controversial security law in Hong Kong.
Danish UN ambassador Ib Petersen called on Beijing to implement UN recommendations in Xinjiang and to "release writers, bloggers, journalists, human rights defenders and others arbitrarily detained for exercising their right to freedom of expression, and guarantee this right, including in Hong Kong."
Meanwhile, Czech ambassador Vaclav Balek also urged China to "end the criminalization of religious and peaceful civil expression by ethnic and religious groups — including Muslim, Uyghurs and Buddhists, Tibetans and Mongolians — under the pretext of protecting state security" and "stop cross-border kidnappings and intimidating Chinese citizens living abroad."
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