Japan’s parliament on Tuesday passed a resolution expressing concern over human rights issues in China’s Xinjiang region and Hong Kong, just three days before the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
This resolution risks provoking the ire of Beijing, even if it carefully avoids any direct questioning of China or mention of human rights violations, after having been debated for a long time between the Japanese elected representatives of the majority and the opposition.
These long exchanges have thus led, according to local media, to water down the language used with regard to China, while Japan tries to maintain a delicate diplomatic balance between its powerful Asian neighbor and its American ally, both important partners. shopping malls in Tokyo.
The resolution, proposed by a bipartisan group and passed by the lower house of the Diet on Tuesday, expresses its “concern about the issue of human rights” in particular in the Xinjiang region of which the Uyghur Muslim minority constitutes the main group. ethnic.
She also discusses Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Hong Kong, noting the concerns of the international community over violations of religious freedom and imprisonment in China.
The text further calls on the Japanese government to engage constructively on the issue of human rights in China.
According to human rights organizations, at least a million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities, mainly Muslims, are incarcerated in camps in Xinjiang. China is accused of forcibly sterilizing women there and imposing forced labor.
On January 20, the French National Assembly adopted a resolution denouncing the “genocide” of the Uighurs by China, like similar texts adopted in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom or even Canada.
Beijing, which denies these accusations, qualified these positions by foreign countries as “gross interference in Chinese internal affairs”.
China presents the “camps” as “vocational training centers” intended to steer people away from religious extremism. They would now be closed as all ‘students’ would have ‘completed their training’.
Beijing is also criticized for its control of freedom of expression in Tibet, territory conquered in 1951 by China and where anti-Chinese riots occurred in 2008.
In Hong Kong, the Chinese takeover has more recently resulted in a drastic crackdown on all dissent, after massive demonstrations by the population.