Lhe French Uyghur community expressed its “anger” on Friday at the state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to France, believing that this welcome was “an encouragement for China to continue its crimes”.
“We wish to express our anger against the fact that Emmanuel Macron welcomes Xi Jinping, who is the executioner of the Uyghur people, the number one responsible for the genocide of the Uyghurs,” said sociologist Dilnur Reyhan at a press conference in Paris. , founder of the Uyghur Institute of Europe.
“In this context where the genocide is still ongoing, this welcome by the French president of the executioner of the Uyghur people is incomprehensible to us (…) and an encouragement for China to continue its crimes until the end. »
“For the Uyghur people and in particular for the French Uyghurs, it is a slap in the face that our President Emmanuel Macron is giving us,” she lambasted. The Chinese president is due to land in Paris on Sunday, for a state visit on Monday and Tuesday which will celebrate 60 years of bilateral diplomatic relations.
The Uighurs, Sunni Muslims, represent the main ethnic group in Xinjiang (northwest China), a region long hit by bloody attacks attributed to Islamists and separatists.
Several Western countries, including the United States, France and the United Kingdom, have denounced an ongoing “genocide” against the Uyghurs.
Since 2017, more than a million Uighurs or members of other ethnic groups, mainly Muslims, have been interned in “re-education” “camps” where human rights violations are numerous, say studies and Western NGOs.
China presents part of these infrastructures as “vocational training centers” which have made it possible, according to it, to teach a profession to the inhabitants, to keep them away from extremism and to ensure them a better life.
