Foreign scholars’ Xinjiang visit dispels Western bias
Region enjoys most prosperous period: official
Xinjiang, as a core area of the Silk Road Economic Belt, is enjoying the best period of prosperity and development in its history under the Belt and Road Initiative, which is undoubtedly the biggest achievement in the region’s fight against terrorism as well as the best answer to the protection of human rights in China, a senior Chinese official said.
Jiang Jianguo, vice minister of the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), said that in the fight against terrorism and extremism, Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region had set up vocational education and training centers in accordance with the law to eliminate terrorism and religious extremism, and that these centers are a “useful experience,” all about the “protection of human rights.” These comments were made at the opening ceremony of the International Seminar on Counter-terrorism, De-radicalization and Human Rights Protection on Friday.
Jiang noted that the fight against terrorism and extremism is a shared responsibility of the international community. He called on the international community to build consensus and make greater efforts to this process.
Scholars and experts from 17 countries, including China, Serbia, Sri Lanka, France, Italy and Pakistan as well as a representative from the UN Human Rights Council participated in Friday’s seminar, where they shared thoughts and experiences concerning the fight against terrorism and religious extremism, as the threat of terrorism and extremism intensifies worldwide.
Opposing double standards
Shohrat Zakir, Chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, said on Friday that for nearly three years there has not been a single case of terrorist crime, nor have there been underground preaching activities that illegally spread religious-extremist ideas. Criminal and public security cases have also dropped significantly.
Predrag Markovic, director of the Institute for Contemporary History in Serbia and vice president of the Socialist Party of Serbia, said “some Western countries criticize China for the counter-terrorism policies in Xinjiang, but let us ask what the US would do if hundreds of Americans die in terrorist attacks? We already have the answer: they scorched two or three countries.”
Markovic stressed that the US has coercively introduced “human rights” in many countries.
“The noble concept of human rights is often misused as a tool for an imperialist struggle for global domination. In the West, many scholars and politicians have tried to monopolize the concept of human rights,” he said.
“Whenever the human rights concept clashed with some American interests, they tended to forget this praiseworthy principle,” he said.
An example for the world
Jiang listed four principles in the global fight against terrorism and extremism. The first is to uphold common standards and oppose double standards; the second to take measures according to local conditions on the basis of international law; the third is to protect human rights and the fourth is to uphold unity and cooperation.
After visiting a vocational education and training center in Kashi, Yalini Saranya, a program officer at Bandaranaike Center for International Studies in Sri Lanka, told the Global Times that “I don’t think there is any violation of human rights here, because I see all the students enjoying themselves; they are not upset at all.”
Compared to other countries, “China’s counter-terrorism act is set as the best example,” she said.