Children play at the International Grand Bazaar in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, on July 14, 2021. (Photo by Wei Xiaohao/chinadaily.com.cn)
Anti-China forces are obsessed with using fake testimonies and fabricated documents to support allegations of human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, a spokesman for the regional government said on Monday.
As more and more people learn about the real situation in Xinjiang, they can see clearly that those allegations are made up to curb China's development, Xu Guixiang said at a news conference in Beijing.
Xu said the anti-China forces only have four types of "evidence" to support their allegations of human rights violations in Xinjiang: testimonies of so-called survivors and witnesses; fake information produced by Western reporters, nongovernment organizations and scholars; misinterpreted satellite images; and so-called internal government material.
"In fact, those allegations are all based on unreliable sources, one-sided stories and deliberately produced material. There aren't any facts to back the allegations at all," Xu said.
Elijan Anayt, another spokesman for the regional government, described allegations aired by some foreign media of torture and abuse in Xinjiang vocational education and training centers as sounding "very fake". The allegations were made by a man claiming to be a former police officer who identified himself by only one name.
Elijan said the regional government is willing to verify the identity of the interviewee if the news outlet can provide his name. As there have been previous cases where people pretend to be former police officers and make up stories, the spokesman said he hopes reporters can be careful when they are approached by people making similar claims so they won't produce irresponsible reports.
Since 2014, Xinjiang has established vocational education and training centers in accordance with the law to offer vocational training and deradicalization courses to people influenced by religious extremism and terrorism. All the trainees have already graduated.
"What is sure is that the human rights of the trainees at the centers are protected by law, so the interviewee's claims can never happen," Elijan said.
Meanwhile, the treatment of a man who claimed to be a former police officer and appeared in June as a "witness" in the public hearings of a so-called Uygur tribunal on accusations of genocide in Xinjiang has stirred controversy. Supporters of the so-called tribunal were angered after they found out that the man was paid much more than Uygur "witnesses".
The "witness" called himself Wang Leizhan and claimed that he had spent several months in Xinjiang in 2018 and witnessed the abuse of suspects.
China has stated many times that the tribunal, based in the United Kingdom, is a pseudo court established for hostile forces to attack and smear Xinjiang and interfere in China's internal affairs. The "witnesses" are simply actors funded by separatist groups and anti-China forces.
On Sept 3, a Twitter user called Nacar Hoshur posted an image of a spreadsheet showing the tribunal's payments to different "witnesses".
Of the $137,637 paid to the "witnesses", Wang, who now lives in Germany, received 43 percent of the total, while Uygur "fact witnesses "only received 17 percent. The other 40 percent of payments were distributed to "expert witnesses", the image showed.
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