Beijing slams US criticism of UN envoy’s Xinjiang trip

China yesterday rejected US criticism of the UN counterterrorism chief’s visit to the restive region of Xinjiang as “absurd” after Washington warned it could serve to legitimise Beijing’s crackdown on Muslim minorities.

Chinese authorities have placed an estimated one million people, many of them ethnic Uighurs, in internment camps in Xinjiang that Beijing downplays as “vocational education centres” needed to steer people away from extremism.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Vladimir Voronkov, the United Nations under-secretary general for counterterrorism, visited China from Thursday to Saturday, adding his trip was “very successful”.