The US described this Sunday as a diversionary maneuver China’s decision to choose an athlete from the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang to light the Olympic Flame at the Winter Games, underlining the ” genocide” in that Chinese region.
The United States ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, commented on the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing this Friday, in which the cross-country skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang, from the Uyghur minority, lit the cauldron Olympian alongside athlete Zhao Jiawen.
“This is an effort by the Chinese to distract us from the real issue here that Uyghurs are being tortured and are victims of human rights violations by the Chinese. And we have to keep that central,” Thomas-Greenfield told reporters. the CNN network.
The United States has promoted a diplomatic boycott, to which other Western countries have joined, against the Winter Games in Beijing, due to the alleged violations against the rights of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang (in western China), which the Chinese Government flatly denies.
“We know that genocide has been committed there,” Thomas-Greenfield added.
For this reason, the US diplomat stressed that it is “important that the audience that saw this (the ceremony) understand that it does not distance us from what we know is happening on the ground.”
This Saturday, the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, asked Chinese leaders to allow a “credible” visit to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, to the Xinjiang area.
Guterres, who is visiting Beijing for the Winter Olympics, met on Saturday with Chinese President Xi Jinping and the country’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, according to a statement from the agency.
Both the US, the UK, Germany, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International have denounced the existence of serious abuses in that area, where the Uyghurs would have suffered mass arrests, torture and forced labor.