The Nordic Region of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland together with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania recently issued a joint statement expressing great concern about the human rights situation of Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang province, media Yahoo News reports.
The statement was delivered by Martin Bille Hermann, Permanent Representative of Denmark to the UN, and said, “We are gravely concerned about the information presented in reports and statements on the human rights situation in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.”
“We are equally concerned by efforts to severely restrict the right to freedom of religion or belief, expression, peaceful assembly and association and the freedoms of movement for Uyghurs and other persons belonging to minority groups, as well as other human rights violations and abuses in Xinjiang,” the statement said.
The countries also expressed their concerns regarding evidence-based reports which include forced labor, forced use of birth control, sexual abuse, and forced sterilizations.
The statement further said that the Nordic and Baltic countries have called on China to allow journalists and other media workers to report on the human rights situation in Xinjiang without surveillance, censorship, or fear of retribution.
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