CHINA has dismissed the ruling of a self-appointed tribunal that it is committing genocide in Xinjiang as “neither legal nor credible.”

The Uyghur Tribunal, a body set up by activists and promoted by separatist lobby group the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), said today that after hearing testimony from alleged victims and “China experts” such as evangelical Christian Adrian Zenz it believed China “deliberately intended to bring about the partial destruction of the Uighur community and its way of life.”

Its conclusion announced today coincides with the launch of US President Joe Biden’s “summit for democracy,” which China views as an anti-communist jamboree designed to ramp up international tensions.

China has rejected claims aired by Mr Zenz and the WUC that it discriminates against the Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group from the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region.

It points out that their language and status is protected by law, that Xinjiang Governor Shohrat Zakir is a Uighur and that the Uighur population has increased both absolutely and proportionally over the last decade.

It says re-education camps for jihadists associated with terror groups like the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, many of which fought alongside al-Qaida-affiliated groups in the Syrian civil war, have been blown out of proportion to feed baseless claims of mass internment as part of a propaganda war being waged by the United States.

President Biden opened today’s summit by slapping new sanctions on Cambodia, which he said was under “Chinese influence,” and condemning what he called a “recession of democracy” around the world.