Xinjiang legislature says US act a piece of waste paper

The Standing Committee of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region People's Congress has called the Uygur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 that was signed into law by US President Donald Trump on Wednesday a piece of waste paper that belongs in a garbage dump.

The act is packed with lies, cold war mentality and political bias, it said in a statement released on Thursday, adding that the United States' claim that Xinjiang had launched a "large-scale detention program targeting people from ethnic groups" was nothing but nonsense.

The region's vocational education and training centers were never "concentration camps", it said.

The White House issued a statement on Wednesday saying Trump had signed the act into law, but Trump did not hold a ceremony to mark the occasion.

The Standing Committee of the regional People's Congress said the act defames the anti-terrorism and anti-extremism measures in Xinjiang and its human rights conditions, and has hurt the feelings of Xinjiang people.

Its enactment gave backing to terrorist forces, which the US aimed to use to sabotage the development of the region, it said. But at the end of day, the US would also fall victim to those forces.

Xinjiang issues have never been about human rights, ethnic groups or religions, but are about fighting terrorism and extremism, it added.

They are China's internal affairs, which should never be interfered with by external forces, it said, and the enactment of the US law left that country standing on the opposite side to the Xinjiang people.