Netherlands' Arnhem breaks ties with sister city Wuhan over China's handling of Uyghurs

ARNHEM: Terming Beijing's treatment of Uyghurs as 'genocide', Netherlands' Arnhem city broke cooperation chains with their sister city of Wuhan.

In a surprise decision, the majority of the Arnhem city council voted against the mayor's plan to continue the relationship with Wuhan and stay in dialogue with China about human rights, a majority of political parties of the Netherlands voted for an immediate break of ties, NL Times reported.

"We believe that human rights violations are taking place on a massive scale in China and the situation of the Uyghurs and other minorities in China is deteriorating by the day and that under these circumstances it is immoral to maintain city ties with China," political parties said during the discussion.

The lower house of Dutch parliament also agreed that the way in which China treats the Uyghur people should be called genocide, GroenLinks, Partij van de Arbeid, Christian Democratic Appeal, PvdD, DENK, ChristenUnie, 50Plus and two individuals from Netherland parliament supported the Democrats66's proposal for the Dutch government to stop mincing words around this issue, NL Times reported citing European media reports.

"This involves terrible abuses against the Uyghur Muslim minority. We should not mince words and call it genocide," D66 parliamentarian Sjoerd Sjoerdsma said.

Meanwhile, a group of protestors including Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, and human rights defenders from Hong Kong, Japan and China demonstrated against the human rights abuses by Beijing and called upon the world community to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games.

They pleaded for the world to act and save the lives of ethnic minorities inside mainland China, as also the political and civil rights of the people of Hong Kong.