Chair, 

China thanks High Commissioner Volker Türk for his briefing. 

In a turbulent world filled with uncertainties, the global human rights governance is faced with complex challenges. All parties should practice true multilateralism and protect and promote human rights by ensuring security, advancing development, and enhancing cooperation, so as to jointly promote the healthy development of the international human rights cause. We should oppose the politicization of human rights by individual countries and their use of human rights issues for confrontation.

China has embarked on a people-centered human rights development path that suits our national conditions and echoes the trend of the times. We have made historical progress in advancing human rights. China stands ready to continue to cooperate with all countries and the OHCHR in the area of human rights on the basis of equality and mutual respect. We hope that the Office will fulfill its mandate in an objective and just manner and conduct constructive dialogue and cooperation with all countries.

Chair, 

Just now, the representatives of the US and the UK fabricated and spread lies in their statements and provoked political confrontation, which China firmly opposes and categorically rejects.

Xinjiang, Xizang, and Inner Mongolia of China enjoy prosperity and stability. The people of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region enjoy a wide range of rights and freedoms in accordance with the law. The lies about China have been readily debunked. The so-called assessment report of Xinjiang is a product of pure political coercion on the OHCHR by the US and the UK. It was already rejected by the Human Rights Council and is completely illegal and null and void.

It is the human rights conditions in the US and the West that need attention of the international community. It is the US which turns a blind eye to the death of over 40,000 civilians in Gaza, violently suppresses peaceful student protests on campus domestically, and sends munitions to allow the fighting to escalate. It bears unshakable responsibilities for the humanitarian catastrophe in the Middle East. It is the UK which committed all kinds of crimes all over the world during hundreds of years of colonial rule, sowing the seeds of most of the wars and conflicts such as those in Palestine and Israel, Sudan, and Myanmar, and continues to fan the flames and commit serious crimes even to this day. It is the US, the UK, and a few Western countries that have allowed the spread of Islamophobia and Asian hate, and continue to discriminate against and restrict ethnic minorities. Their loud claims to champion human rights are extremely hypocritical.

We strongly call on the Office to seriously listen to the international community’s appeal for justice and to investigate and pursue accountability for the human rights violations by the US, the UK, and a few other Western countries.

Thank you, Chair.