Diplomats from UN Geneva office to visit Xinjiang

BEIJING: Senior diplomats from permanent missions of eight countries to the United Nations Office at Geneva including Pakistan arrived here to visit Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to get first-hand information about the human-right situation there.

Other diplomats are from Venezuela, Cuba, Egypt, Cambodia, Russia, Senegal and Belarus. They were invited by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

During talks with the delegation, Jiang Jianguo, deputy head of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said that since the 1990s, the "three evil forces" -- terrorism, extremism and separatism -- have organized and conducted thousands of violent terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, causing massive casualties and injuries of people and substantial property damage.

Based on international anti-terrorism experience and its own reality, Xinjiang has made obvious progress in recent years by means including setting up vocational education and training centers, Jiang said, adding that people's sense of gain, happiness and security have been greatly lifted.

Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said when holding talks with the delegation that the world is faced with rising instability, uncertainty and insecurity, thus multilateralism should be insisted on.

All parties should respect other countries' own human rights development paths, jointly oppose supremacy of human rights and promote the healthy development of the human rights causes in the world, Le said.