Online exchange sheds light on truth about Xinjiang

URUMQI, June 18 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Embassy in the Netherlands and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region jointly held a video exchange session Friday that exposed the lies and fallacies about Xinjiang.

Tan Jian, Chinese ambassador to the Netherlands, said in his video remark that, over the past 60 years, Xinjiang's average life expectancy has increased from 30 to 72 years, with the total economic output surging more than 200 times and per capita GDP increasing nearly 40 times.

More than 3 million poor people have been lifted out of poverty in the region, Tan noted, adding that over the past four decades, the Uygur population in the region has more than doubled.

However, some people with ulterior motives have disregarded Xinjiang's achievements, and deliberately spread lies about human rights in Xinjiang to instigate ethnic conflicts, he said.

Jarulla Hisamidin, deputy chairman of the regional government, said the U.S. and Western anti-China forces have groundlessly "stigmatized" and "demonized" Xinjiang.

They have even fabricated the lie of the century that Xinjiang has committed "genocide" and "crimes against humanity," which is the biggest false accusation in human history, Jarulla Hisamidin added.

Ablat Ahmat, a cotton farmer from the city of Kuqa in the Aksu Prefecture, showed his family's large agricultural machinery and modern production methods in the video link.

He denounced the claims of forcing farmers to plant and pick cotton as "nonsense."