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China has committed “serious human rights violations” against Uighur Muslims in its northwestern region

China has committed “serious human rights violations” against Uighur Muslims in its northwestern region of Xinjiang that may amount to “crimes against humanity,” according to a long-awaited report released Wednesday by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The detailed 45-page report, released just minutes before outgoing commissioner Michelle Bachelet’s term ended at midnight Geneva time, has been repeatedly delayed and its release vehemently opposed by China.

The report, which documented what it described as arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim groups in the context of the government’s “application of counter-terrorism and ‘extremism’ strategies”, was hailed by human rights groups as a watershed moment in efforts to push the Chinese government to responsibilities.

The report comes four years after a UN panel of experts highlighted “credible reports” in August 2018 that more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities were interned in extrajudicial camps in Xinjiang for “re-education” and indoctrination. China vehemently denies wrongdoing. It previously said it had set up such centers as a way to counter “extremism” in the region and has since said the facilities have been closed – a claim the UN agency said it could not verify.

According to the UN report, “the described policies and practices in (the region) crossed borders, separated families and severed human contact, inflicting particular suffering on affected Uyghur, Kazakh and other predominantly Muslim minority families, exacerbated by patterns of intimidation and intimidation.” threats to publicly speaking members of the diaspora community.” The Chinese government, which has repeatedly protested the release of the report, responded with a 131-page document – nearly three times the length of the report itself – in which it condemned the findings as “based on misinformation and lies fabricated by anti-Chinese forces”.

Beijing’s response was published by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) alongside its own report after China was given preliminary access to the document to review and respond. Separately on Thursday, a foreign ministry spokesman said China “rightfully rejects” the report, which it called “invalid and illegal”. The spokesman also accused the Office of the High Commissioner of being “reduced to the role of hitman and accomplice of the US and the West in their efforts to dominate developing countries”.

Although the report was welcomed by some overseas Uighurs and human rights activists, any move to investigate further – as the report calls for – would require the approval of UN member states in a body where China has considerable influence. Action on other recommendations in the report, such as the release of arbitrarily detained persons and clarification of the whereabouts of missing persons, would depend on the cooperation of the Chinese government.

Inside Xinjiang

The report focuses on what it describes as “arbitrary detention and related patterns of abuse” at what Beijing says are “vocational education and training centers” between 2017 and 2019. He concluded that descriptions of detention during this period “were characterized by patterns of torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. The report details findings from what the Office of the High Commissioner describes as years of effort to analyze and assess public documents, open source and research materials. It also includes information obtained from interviews with 40 people of Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz ethnicity. Twenty-six interviewees said they were either detained or worked in various facilities in Xinjiang.

While the High Commissioner was blocked by Beijing from conducting an on-the-ground investigation, the report contained accounts from those who, in their own words, experienced the so-called vocational training and education centers in Xinjiang. “I was not told what I was there for and how long I would be there. I was asked to confess to a crime, but I didn’t know what to confess to,” said one of the interviewees, according to Reuters. reporting.

The report also said that almost all interviewees described either injections, pills or both being given regularly, which made them feel drowsy, while some interviewees also spoke of “various forms of sexual violence”, including some cases of rape, as well as various forms of sexual humiliation, including forced nudity, according to the report. Allegations of sexual and gender-based violence “appear credible,” the report said, but it was not possible to “draw broader conclusions” about the extent to which they were part of broad patterns at the facilities based on existing information, the report said. .

“The government has flatly denied all allegations, as well as its gendered and degrading attacks on those who came forward to share their experiences, and contributed to the indignity and suffering of survivors,” the report said. The report said that while it could not confirm the number of detainees in the centers, it was reasonable to conclude from the available information that the number of individuals in the facilities, at least between 2017 and 2019, was “very significant, constituting a substantial part”. Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.

The detention system, the report found, also came “against a backdrop of wider discrimination” against members of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities based on “perceived security threats” posed by individual members of those groups. These included unreasonable restrictions on religious identity and expression and the right to privacy and movement. The report also pointed to “serious indications” of violations of reproductive rights through “coercive and discriminatory enforcement of family planning and birth control policies.”

Over the past four years, the international community within the United Nations has done little to address allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The country has not agreed to any formal call for an investigation at its top human rights body, while UN experts’ calls for China to allow rights monitoring have been met with stiff denials of wrongdoing by Beijing and no call for free access to come take a look. themselves.

This impasse at the UN increased the focus and importance of the High Commissioner’s report for those seeking to hold China accountable within the international system. The report does not clarify the political challenges to the advancing calls for a formal UN investigation, as China holds significant sway among UN member states. But human rights defenders said it should be a wake-up call to international action.

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