Beijing — In a long-delayed report assessing a crackdown on Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups, the U.N. accused China of grave human rights breaches that may amount to “crimes against humanity.” Beijing slammed the evaluation as an invention of Western governments on Thursday.
Human rights organizations have accused China of forcibly interning one million or more members of minority groups in detention centers, where many have reported being tortured, sexually abused, and coerced into abandoning their language and religion. The camps were just one component of what human rights groups have termed a brutal campaign against extremism in the far western region of Xinjiang, which included severe birth control laws and extensive restrictions on the mobility of people.
The evaluation by the U.N. human rights office in Geneva mainly matched prior reports by academics, advocacy organizations, and the news media, and also lent the findings the authority of a global agency. However, it was unclear what effect it might have.
Nonetheless, among Uyghurs who had gone abroad, there was a perceptible feeling of relief that the report had finally been made public, since many had feared it would never be released. Many saw it as a validation of their cause and their years of lobbying effort.
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“The study is very scathing and a powerful indictment of China’s crimes against humanity,” said Rayhan Asat, a Uyghur attorney whose brother is now imprisoned in Xinjiang. “The Chinese government has claimed for years that Uyghurs are terrorists. Now, we can point to them and declare that they are the terrorists.”
Human rights organizations, Japan, and Germany promptly welcomed the report, which had been entangled in a tug-of-war between China and key Western governments as well as human rights organizations who have condemned the document’s repeated delays in release. According to some Geneva diplomats, it was practically finished a year ago.
China’s anti-terrorism and anti-extremism measures have resulted in grave abuses of human rights, according to a report issued late Wednesday. The report asks for “urgent attention” from the United Nations, the international community, and China itself to solve these issues.
Human rights organizations repeated efforts for the United Nations Human Rights Council to establish an impartial international commission to probe the claims at its meeting next month. However, China gave little indication of reversing its categorical denials or recasting the criticism as a politically motivated smear campaign.
“The evaluation is a patchwork of fake facts that serves as political tools for the U.S. and other Western nations to utilize Xinjiang strategically to constrain China,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Wang Wenbin said. It demonstrates once again that the United Nations Human Rights Office has been reduced to an enforcer and collaborator of the United States and other Western nations.
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China published a 122-page reply entitled “Fight against Terrorism and Extremism in Xinjiang: Truth and Facts,” which was uploaded alongside the report by the United Nations.
Interviews with almost a dozen former prisoners and others acquainted with circumstances at eight detention sites contributed to the U.N.’s conclusions. They claimed being assaulted with batons, questioned while water was thrown on their faces, and made to remain still for extended periods of time on little stools.
Some said they were prohibited from praying and were required to take nightly turns to check that their fellow captives were not praying or breaching other restrictions. Women reported being forced to engage in oral sex with guards or have gynecological examinations in front of huge crowds.
According to the assessment, detentions were characterized by patterns of torture and other cruel and inhumane treatment, and claims of rape and other forms of sexual abuse looked believable.
The study said, “The amount of arbitrary and discriminatory incarceration of Uyghur and other largely Muslim populations… in the context of limitations and denial of basic rights more broadly… may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
Some nations, particularly the United States, have accused China of perpetrating genocide in Xinjiang. This was not mentioned.
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It is “reasonable to establish that a pattern of large-scale arbitrary detention occurred” between at least 2017 and 2019.
Beijing has shut down a number of camps, which it referred to as vocational training and education institutes, but hundreds of thousands of inmates continue to languish in jail, many on vague and secret accusations.
The study demanded that China free all unjustly arrested persons and reveal the locations of those who have vanished and whose families are searching for them.
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One of the first foreign nations to respond on the study was Japan, whose criticism of China’s behavior in Xinjiang has lately been increasingly loud.
“Japan is very worried about the human rights situation in Xinjiang,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno. “We feel it is crucial that universal principles like as freedom, fundamental human rights, and the rule of law be also safeguarded in China.”
A statement from the German Foreign Ministry welcomed the publishing of the study, stating that it confirmed “the utmost worry.” It demanded the immediate release of all those unlawfully imprisoned and said that Germany was working with the EU to prevent the suspected use of forced labor in the manufacturing of items from Xinjiang that are ultimately marketed across the globe.
On 1 October 2019 in Brussels, Belgium, protesters demonstrate against China’s treatment of mostly Muslim minority populations.
Human Rights Watch said that the report created a good platform for further United Nations action to ensure responsibility for the violations.
John Fisher, the group’s deputy director of global advocacy, said, “Never before has it been more crucial for the U.N. system to stand up to Beijing and to stand with victims.”
The U.K. director of the World Uyghur Congress, Rahima Mahmut, expressed relief that the report was finally released, but lacked optimism that it would alter the Chinese government’s actions. She urged the international community to send Beijing a message that “business cannot continue as usual.”
The publication of the report was in some respects as significant as its contents.
Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that she had to fight temptation to both publish and not publish. She declared in June that the report will be issued before the end of her four-year tenure on August 31, which prompted a surge of back-channel activities, including letters from civil society, citizens, and governments on all sides of the issue.
The news was released only minutes before her formal resignation.
According to critics, her refusal to publish the report would have been a visible stain on her tenure.
“The inexplicable delay in publishing this report is a stain” on the record of the U.N. human rights office, Amnesty International’s secretary-general Agnès Callamard said, “but this should not diminish its relevance.”
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