‘Risible hypocrisy’
MPs’ verdict on Beijing after it accuses UK of hate crimes and illegally holding migrants in bizarre submission to UN
CHINA has accused Britain of institutional racism and hate crimes in an extraordinary submission to a United Nations report on human rights in the UK.
The Communist state, which faces accusations of crimes against humanity, demands that the UK ‘stop interfering in the internal affairs of other countries under the pretext of human rights’.
Astonishingly, it also calls on the UK to ‘combat religious discrimination and intolerance’ – despite its brutal crackdowns on minority groups.
Tory MPs said the claims by China were ‘risible’ and ‘hypocritical’.
The UN conducts periodic reviews of human rights in all of its 193 member states with the goal of improving the situation in every country. As part of that process, any member can put recommendations to another state, which must then address them.
These then form part of a report on the human rights situation in the member state, which is then circulated by the UN.
China’s submissions call into question the effectiveness of the process given it is able to accuse other countries of human rights abuses despite the many claims levelled against it.
Among its demands is for the UK to ‘remove the mentality of colonialism and address the root causes of its systematic racism, xenophobia and hate crimes’.
It says that the UK should ‘investigate ill-treatment and misuse of force in detention facilities and promote accountability’.
The UK is ‘involuntarily detaining’ migrants, it added, questioning what measures had been taken to safeguard their human rights.
It raised these concerns despite a UN report finding that China was responsible for ‘crimes against humanity’ in Xinjiang province.
‘Allegations of patterns of torture, or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and genderbased violence,’ it said.
Elsewhere in its submission, China accused the UK of imposing ‘coercive measures’ against developing countries in a reference to the pandemic.
It claimed that these measures ‘seriously violated basic human rights of people in the targeted countries’.
China made these points despite imposing some of the most draconian lockdowns of any country in the world, many of which have only just been lifted.
It also said that there was ‘systemic, widespread and institutional discrimination against women in the UK’ – despite allegations of rape and the enforced sterilisation of Uyghur women in China.
The Communist state also asked the UK ‘what measures it intends to take to address chronic violence, sexual harassment, gender discrimination against women in the workplace, and the threat of poverty faced by them?’
A draft report containing these and other recommendations has now been produced and the UK will respond early this year.
The questions from China were addressed by Justice Minister Mike Freer at a session of the UN in November last year.
A UK government spokesman said: ‘The UK is committed to protecting human rights both domestically and internationally.’
The UN did not respond to requests for comment.