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| Chinese flags fluttering in front of a mosque of a Muslim minority Uighur tribe in Xinjiang, China. © Reuters = News1 © News1 Reporter Seoyoon Choi |
Reuters reported on the 26th that the Dutch parliament passed a non-binding resolution on the 25th (local time) stating that for the first time in Europe, the treatment of China’s Uighur Muslim minorities constitutes genocide.
Activists and UN human rights experts said at least one million Muslims were detained in remote areas of western Xinjiang. Activists and some Western politicians have accused China of torture, forced labor, and infertility surgery (targeting Uyghurs).
China denies any human rights violations. China is providing vocational training (to the Uighurs) and insisting that it needs to fight extremism.
The resolution only briefly mentioned the responsibility of the Chinese government, saying, “The genocide of the Uyghurs, a minority ethnic group, is taking place in China.”
Earlier this week, Canada passed a resolution setting out the treatment of the Uighur genocide in China earlier this week.
The Dutch parliament’s motion stated that Chinese government actions, such as’measures to prevent childbirth’ and’punishment camps’, fall under UN Resolution 260, commonly known as the Genocide Convention.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Ruther’s conservative Free Democratic Democratic Party (VVD) voted against the resolution.
Foreign Minister Steph Block said that the government did not want to use the term’massacre’. This is because the UN or international courts have not declared the situation (in China).
After the motion was passed, Bloch told reporters that “the Uyghur situation is causing great concern,” and that the Netherlands hopes to cooperate with other countries.