China Protests ‘Vile’ Rights Motion Passed by Japan Parliament

(Bloomberg) -- China condemned a motion on Uyghur human rights adopted by Japan's parliament, ratcheting up tensions between the neighbors just days before Beijing hosts the Winter Olympics.

The resolution “is extremely vile in nature, as it disregards facts and truth,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said in a statement on the ministry's website posted on Tuesday. With a “deplorable track record in human rights,” Japan has no authority to comment on other countries' human rights conditions, he added.

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Most of Japan's ruling and opposition lower house lawmakers approved the motion Tuesday, which expressed concern about human rights problems in Xinjiang, as well as Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Hong Kong, though without naming China directly. The Japanese resolution calls on the government to investigate the human rights situation and form a plan to work with the global community to help those affected.

Zhao said China lodged a complaint via its foreign ministry, and its diplomats made “solemn representations” to their Japanese counterparts.

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Long reluctant to take a public stance on human rights, Japan has adopted a harder line since Beijing's clampdown in Hong Kong in 2020, chilling the already difficult relations between the two Asian powerhouses.

Some Japanese lawmakers had criticized the resolution after the wording was watered down over the course of months of wrangling, with the result that the word “condemnation” was removed from the title.

The move in Japan followed a similar resolution by the French parliament that referred to treatment of Uyghurs as “genocide.” China regularly hits back at the genocide accusations leveled by the U.S. government and others, calling them “the lie of the century.”