UK to challenge China at UN meeting for Xinjiang access

UK foreign secretary will say UN needs ‘urgent and unfettered’ access to a region where some one million Uighurs are thought to have been held.

The United Kingdom will call on Monday for the United Nations to be given “urgent and unfettered” access to Xinjiang to investigate reports of abuses in the far western Chinese region, as Britain returns to the UN Human Rights Council as a voting member. British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is also expected to condemn the rights record of fellow council members China and Russia and raise concerns about Myanmar and Belarus, his office said. On China, Raab will refer to reports of abuses in Xinjiang, including torture, forced labour and the forced sterilisation of women. “They are taking place on an industrial scale,” he will tell the meeting, according to his office.