UN Xinjiang report is 'political tool' against Beijing, says China

|HT|

China on Thursday said a major United Nations report into alleged human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region was a "political tool" against Beijing.

A long-awaited report by the UN human rights office said allegations of torture in the far-western region were credible and cited possible crimes against humanity.

"The so-called critical report you mentioned is planned and manufactured firsthand by the US and some Western forces, it is wholly illegal and invalid," foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular briefing.

"The report is a hodgepodge of misinformation, and it is a political tool used as part of the West's strategy of using Xinjiang to control China," he added.

Wang said the UN rights office had "sunk to (becoming) the thug and accomplice of the US and the West against the vast majority of developing countries".

China for years has been accused of detaining more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang.

Beijing has vehemently rejected the claims, insisting it is running vocational centres designed to curb extremism.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)