Side event related to Xinjiang opposed

A spokesperson for China's Permanent Mission to the United Nations expressed opposition on Wednesday to a side event on the so-called human rights situation in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

The event, organized by a group of Western nations including the United States and the United Kingdom, is "full of lies and disinformation" and further exposes the countries' "political attempt to use Xinjiang to contain China", the spokesperson said.

"Such an event is widely resisted by the overwhelming majority of member states and is a self-staged political farce," the spokesperson said. "The side event is a desperate struggle of the US and a few Western countries after their lies about Xinjiang were exposed. The US fabricated lies of 'genocide' in Xinjiang, which finds no support at all (and only shamed itself)."

The spokesperson said the nations had also submitted a draft decision to the Human Rights Council, an effort to put Xinjiang-related issues on the agenda, but failed in the vote.

The Human Rights Council "explicitly rejected their political maneuver" and refused to endorse the assessment, which was released by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights "under Western countries' coercive diplomacy", the spokesperson said.

Unwilling to accept their failure in Geneva, the group continued to hype the issue of Xinjiang in New York by inviting anti-China experts and witnesses to "perform such a farce", the spokesperson said.

"No matter how the US and other Western countries glamorize the side event, it is a political farce contrary to the fact and truth and has been rejected by the majority," he said, adding that the event "serves the political interest of the US to suppress others and maintain its hegemony".

"The US fears the rise of developing countries and regards China's development as a challenge and threat to its hegemony. So, the US and a few Western countries are trying to use Xinjiang to create a mess in China," the spokesperson said.

The US has overlooked terrorist attacks on Xinjiang and has started to "make political farce, and to maliciously attack and smear China", the spokesperson said. "It is clear to all that the US cares nothing about human rights in Xinjiang but its own hegemony. The US' attempt to undermine China's development is against the trend of the times and is doomed to fail."

The group had incited several anti-China joint statements in the Human Rights Council, the spokesperson said, adding that the core group mainly consists of former colonial countries that have "committed numerous crimes such as slave trading, colonial plunder, and the massacre of indigenous people".