This video is based on an International Forum hosted by China Public Diplomacy Association. The actual forum took place in Guli’s House, Kashgar, Xinjiang, on 20 May 2021.

Your Excellences, Dear friends, Ladies and gentlemen,

Allow me to express my utmost gratitude to the China Public Diplomacy Association and its President Wu Hailong for inviting me to be a part of this very significant Forum.

The Forum will be a good opportunity for participants to be in a position to get more information on the situation in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and to exchange opinions of this matter.

The question of the Uyghur ethnic community has attracted broad interest and got global publicity in the recent period.In my opinion, human rights are one of the fundamental grounds of international law and order. These rights are defined by the most important international documents, such as the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Additionally, they are more deeply defined through the constitutional systems of all the UN members. Along with legal order, the international community has developed broad institutional mechanisms of protection of human rights and freedoms, predominantly through the UN bodies, primarily through the Human Rights Council. As an active promotor of multilateralism, China participates in all the UN activities, including those within the Human Rights Council, as a member state for the next two years.

To protect the state's unity and necessity to respect differences within its regions and provinces, China consistently follows and champions the "One China" doctrine. Such policy was visible in relations with Hong Kong, in which China highly respected the "one country, two systems" principle in the process of returning Hong Kong to China.

One shall bear in mind that, along with the Uygur ethnic group, more than 50 ethnic communities are coexisting in China, which is at the same time the most populated country in the world. China efforts to protect their identities, differences, and peculiarities, ensure harmony and provide sustainable coexisting among them

Twenty years ago, dear friends, I enjoyed visiting the Chinese province Guizhou as a then prime minister of the Montenegrin. As a republic and an integral part of the former Yugoslavia, Montenegro had developed excellent relations with this Chinese province. The goal of my visit was to work toward developing and deepening such ties. While being in the province's capital Guiyang, I learned that 23 different ethnicities are living there, making this province as one of the most diverse in that regard. The most numerous minorities are Miao and Bouyei, and one of the minorities is also Uygur. Provincial and the party representatives also informed me that they are particularly proud of harmonious coexisting among minorities and their adequate representation in all the province's governing bodies. Additionally, they told me that the peculiar interest of both China and the province is to preserve the identity of every minority group and to avoid risks of assimilation, which minorities' representatives later confirmed later. Indeed, it was visible that Guizhou, as a province with numerous ethnic minorities and differences, was putting great effort to preserve interethnic harmony and coexistence with the Chinese majority ethnic group Han.

Dear friends, Such experience from this visit and the knowledge about China's active role in Human Rights Council, a significant UN body, assured me that analyzing the Chinese standpoint toward Uyghur ethnic community shall be treated in a careful and objective manner. I see this Forum as a precious opportunity to express the accurate position of the Uyghur minority in China.

Dear friends, Expecting that Forum's results will contribute to a better understanding position of Uygur in China, allow me to wish you successful work. Thank you for your attention.

Filip Vujanovic is Former President of Montenegro.

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