China prevented 'great tragedy': state-run paper

Massively stepped-up security in China's restive far western region of Xinjiang has helped prevent "great tragedy", a state-run newspaper said yesterday, in the country's first response to a critical United Nations report on the situation there.

A UN human rights panel said on Friday that it had received many credible reports that 1 million ethnic Uighurs in China are held in what resembles a "massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy".

China has said that Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists who plot attacks and stir up tensions between the mostly Muslim Uighur minority who call the region home and the ethnic Han Chinese majority.

Hundreds have died in unrest there in recent years. In joint editorials in its Chinese and English versions, the widely-read Global Times tabloid said criticism of the rights record in Xinjiang was aimed at stirring trouble there and destroying hard-earned stability.

China's security presence there has prevented Xinjiang from becoming another Syria or Libya, it added. "There is no doubt that the current peace and stability in Xinjiang is partly due to the high intensity of regulations. Police and security posts can be seen everywhere in Xinjiang," the paper wrote.

China yesterday rejected allegations raised by the UN panel that 1 million Uighurs may be held in internment camps in the restive Xinjiang region.