UN report accuses China of serious human rights violations in Xinjiang

China has committed “serious human rights violations” which many constitute “crimes against humanity”, on Muslim minorities in remote Xinjiang, the outgoing UN human rights commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, has said in a long-awaited report, dramatically released before her last day in office ended on August 31.

These violations – including rape, forced sterilisations and disappearances — were committed by China in the context of the government’s application of counter-terrorism and counter-extremism strategies, the 48-page report said.

“The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups, pursuant to law and policy, in context of restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity,” the report released by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the leading UN body on human rights.

China responded by saying the report was “based on the disinformation and lies fabricated by anti-China forces” and that it “wantonly smears and slanders” China and interferes in the country’s internal affairs.

According to The Guardian, the report’s publication was delayed by the eleventh-hour delivery of an official Chinese response that contained names and pictures of individuals that had to be blacked out by the UN commissioner’s office for privacy and safety reasons.

The report’s ultimate release has rights activists calling for a more detailed UN investigation into “Chinese government’s crimes against humanity”.

“The High Commissioner’s damning findings explain why the Chinese government fought tooth and nail to prevent the publication of her Xinjiang report, which lays bare China’s sweeping rights abuses,” Human Rights Watch’s China director Sophie Richardson told HT.

“The United Nations Human Rights Council should use the report to initiate a comprehensive investigation into the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity targeting the Uyghurs and others – and hold those responsible to account,” Richardson said.

The report has been damning on how Beijing has violated the rights of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) for the past several years.

The report records large-scale violation of human rights under various categories including “family separations and reprisals and enforced disappearances”, “employment and labour issues”, “reproductive rights”, “rights to privacy and freedom of movement”, “religious, cultural, linguistic identity and expression” and “conditions and treatment at vocational educational training centres or VETCs”.

Particularly disturbing are the accounts of sexual violence and rape perpetrated mostly against women in detention rooms – without cameras – inside the so-called “VETCs”

The VETCs were “marked by patterns of torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”, the report read.

“Some also spoke of various forms of sexual violence, including some instances of rape, affecting mainly women. These accounts included having been forced by guards to perform oral sex in the context of an interrogation and various forms of sexual humiliation, including forced nudity,” the report said.

Also damning were the portions on forced birth control among Muslim minnority women.

Bachelet’s report pointed to a “sharp decline in birth rates” in Xinjiang from 2017, with the rate dropping 48.7 % between 2017 and 2019 especially majority Uyghur areas of the province like Kashgar and Hotan; there was an “unusually sharp rise” in sterilisations and intrauterine device placements in the same period.

“Serious human rights violations have been committed in XUAR in the context of the Government’s application of counter-terrorism and counter-“extremism” strategies,” the report said.

“The implementation of these strategies, and associated policies in XUAR has led to interlocking patterns of severe and undue restrictions on a wide range of human rights. These patterns of restrictions are characterised by a discriminatory component, as the underlying acts often directly or indirectly affect Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities,” the OHCHR report said.

The report, titled “Fight against Terrorism and Extremism in Xinjiang: Truth and Facts” put on record Beijing’s consistent position that policies on Xinjiang are for “counterterrorism” and the VETCs are what the name suggests: vocational training camps.

Beijing had consistently denied the very existence of camps in Xinjiang until towards the end of 2017 when, for the first time, it admitted the presence of the so-called training camps.

Neither central nor provincial authorities, however, have revealed the total number of people who were kept in the camps, keeping details murky and restricting access to the camps except on guided tours.

The allegations against Beijing included incarceration of around one million people from minority Muslim communities in detention camps, forced labour in manufacturing units of the resource-rich Xinjiang, forced abortions, and mass indoctrination.

China has consistently denied the allegations, calling it a smear campaign carried out by western countries.

Bachelet, a former Chilean President, had been incarcerated and tortured during the regime of General Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s.