The United Nations human rights office took a forceful stand this week against China’s efforts to reshape the global rights agenda, experts say, by releasing a report that finds Beijing has seriously violated the rights of ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region, including possible crimes against humanity.
The report by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) found “large-scale arbitrary deprivation of liberty of members of the Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities” and “credible” allegations of patterns of torture of detainees confined in government facilities.
The long-awaited OHCHR assessment on Xinjiang was released Wednesday despite intense efforts by China, a powerful U.N. member, to suppress it.
China has in recent years increasingly advanced its own, state-centric rights model that prioritizes security, economic development, and a strong, sovereign state. Instead, the call by the world’s leading human rights authority for China to comply with international rights law represents a staunch defense of universal principles focused on protecting individual rights.
Beijing “wants to push other nations to adopt a different framing of human rights, one that would align with their values. And this report pushes back against that in a pretty strong way,” says Darren Byler, assistant professor of international studies at Simon Fraser University, who has conducted extensive research on China’s treatment of the Uyghur population.
The U.N. statement offers other countries “some clarity and … an authoritative source to turn to” in taking a position on Xinjiang, he says.
Researchers, scholars, and activists focused on Xinjiang, as well as former detainees and the Uyghur diaspora, welcomed the report for corroborating their years of work to expose the human rights violations. For many victims, it marks the first step toward justice.
“We waited so long for the truth to be recognized,” says Rushan Abbas, a Uyghur American activist who’s been outspoken about her own relatives’ disappearances in Xinjiang.
Ms. Abbas, the founder and executive director of the Washington-based Campaign for Uyghurs, says she hopes the report will lead to concrete actions not only by the U.N., but also by countries that so far have remained silent on Xinjiang, including Muslim-majority nations.
China in tight spot
Amid rising geopolitical tensions in the world, the U.N. report highlights shared humanitarian values, experts say.
“This issue has become a geopolitical issue, which is very unfortunate because it’s a global humanitarian issue,” says Sean Roberts, associate professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
“It was extremely important to see a U.N. body provide this report,” he says, “because the Chinese government’s primary rebuttal to accusations about the policies towards Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims has been that it is the product of disinformation from the U.S. and European governments who have an ax to grind with the Chinese government.”
Indeed, Beijing immediately denounced the report as the product of political manipulation by “anti-China forces,” saying it has “zero credibility.”
“This so-called assessment is orchestrated and produced by the U.S. and some Western forces and is completely illegal, null, and void,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a Beijing press conference Thursday. “It is a patchwork of disinformation that serves as a political tool for some Western forces to strategically use Xinjiang to contain China.”
Still, the U.N. report raises challenges for China diplomatically, experts say. As it grows in wealth and power, China has worked hard to raise its stature, influence, and participation at the U.N.
In May, it hailed the first visit by the U.N. high commissioner for human rights to China in 17 years. On a six-day trip, High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and traveled to the western region of Xinjiang, where Chinese officials said she was able to “observe and experience first-hand the real Xinjiang,” according to a report by the state-run Global Times newspaper.
At the time, official media praised Ms. Bachelet for “honestly and objectively” relating her experiences in Xinjiang and China. Yet this week, Beijing said the Xinjiang report overseen by Ms. Bachelet shows the OHCHR is a vehicle for disinformation. “The OHCHR has been reduced to an enforcer and accomplice of the U.S. and some Western forces in forcing the developing countries to fall into line with them,” said Mr. Wang.
What the report says
China’s ruling Communist Party since 2016 has intensified a “strike hard operation” against what it considers terrorism, religious extremism, and separatist tendencies among Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic groups in Xinjiang, a strategic frontier with Central Asia. Sporadic violence has erupted between Uyghurs and ethnic Han Chinese in the northwest territory, and some Uyghurs want greater autonomy or even independence from Beijing. But experts view the root cause of unrest as China’s decades of repression and discriminatory treatment of Uyghurs – a perspective supported by the U.N.’s report.
Based on extensive research, including interviews with dozens of people who were held in or worked in the camps since 2016, the U.N. found that the government’s counterterrorism and counter-extremism strategies in Xinjiang “led to interlocking patterns of severe and undue restrictions on a wide range of human rights,” imposed in a discriminatory manner on Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim communities.
Researchers have estimated that as many as a million of the total Uyghur population of 11 million have been confined in what the government described as “vocational education and training centers” (VETCs) for education and rehabilitation.
While not using the words “genocide” or “risk of genocide” – applied to China’s actions in Xinjiang by countries including the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands, as well as by the European Parliament – the report finds credible allegations of forced medical treatment and “individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence.” The detention facilities “provide fertile ground for such violations to take place on a broad scale,” it states.
“This report from the U.N. offers a lot of validation to the former detainees and their family members. It took a lot of courage for [victims] to speak to this body, knowing they could be exposed,” says Dr. Byler, the Simon Fraser University professor.
Already, he and other experts say that the international scrutiny of China’s crackdown on Muslims in Xinjiang appears to have led Beijing to modify its policies. For example, he says significant numbers of detainees, especially older people, have returned to their communities or moved into factories in recent years, where conditions are better.
Yet there has also been a significant increase in criminal prosecutions in Xinjiang, as former detainees have moved into the formal prison system, he says.
Seeking justice
The U.N. report calls on China to release “all individuals arbitrarily deprived of their liberty” in Xinjiang, “whether in VETCs, prisons, or other detention facilities,” and to ensure families of those detained have contact with their loved ones. The government should move urgently to ensure its counterterrorism laws in Xinjiang conform with international human rights law, and to repeal all discriminatory laws against Uyghurs and other Muslims, it says.
Ms. Abbas, the Uyghur American activist, believes the report will bring positive change for Uyghurs in China. “The pressure definitely works,” she says.
Despite Beijing’s public posture, “little by little they are releasing some people,” says Ms. Abbas, whose sister, Gulshan Abbas, is serving a prison sentence on terrorism charges.
“Missing her and loving her keeps refueling me to fight harder,” says Ms. Abbas. “I will keep going until I see her.”
Adila Sadir, a Uyghur immigrant who runs a restaurant in Boston, says the U.N. report substantiating the rights violations marks “a huge improvement of the Uyghurs’ case.”
Ms. Sadir says the mass detentions have had far-reaching impacts. Even though she has more freedom in the U.S., the knowledge that her father is imprisoned in Xinjiang and that she can’t do anything to help him is a constant source of anguish. “The Chinese government is detaining people not only in my hometown, but here in a foreign country, they mentally torture us. It is very painful,” she says.
“I think the report will be a really big help for Uyghurs, but I don’t know what will happen next,” she says.
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