WEB DESK
India on Thursday abstained from voting on a draft resolution in the UN Human Rights Council on holding a debate on the alleged mistreatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province of China.
The draft resolution on “holding a debate on the situation of human rights in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China” was rejected in the 47-member Council after 17 members voted in favour, 19 members voted against, including China, and 11 abstentions, including India, Brazil, Mexico and Ukraine.
Several human rights groups have been raising concerns over the human rights situation in Xinjiang region for years, alleging that more than one million Uyghurs had been detained forcibly in a large network of what Beijing calls “re-education camps”.
The groups have several times tried to draw the attention of the UN Human Rights Office and UN human rights mechanisms to alleged human rights violations against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim communities in China since late 2017.
The draft resolution was presented by a core group consisting of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the UK and the USA, and co-sponsored by a range of states, including Turkey.