U.N. cites possible crimes against humanity in China’s Xinjiang region
GENEVA — China’s discriminatory detention of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in the western region of Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity, the U.N. human rights office said in a long-awaited report released Wednesday, which cited “serious” rights violations and patterns of torture meted out in recent years.
The report calls for an urgent international response over allegations of torture and other rights violations in Beijing’s campaign to root out terrorism.
U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, facing pressure on both sides of the issue, brushed aside multiple Chinese calls for her office to withhold the report, which follows her own carefully crafted trip to Xinjiang in May. Beijing has contended that the report is part of a Western campaign to smear China’s reputation.
The report has fanned a tug-of-war for diplomatic influence with the West over the rights of the region’s native Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups.
The report, which U.N. officials said had been all but ready for months, was published with just minutes to go in Ms. Bachelet’s four-year term. It was unexpected to break significant new ground beyond sweeping findings from independent advocacy groups and journalists who have documented concerns about human rights in Xinjiang for years.
But the office’s report comes with the imprimatur of the United Nations, and the member states that make it up. The run-up to its release fueled a debate over China’s influence at the world body and epitomized the on-and-off diplomatic chill between Beijing and the West over human rights, among other sore spots.
The 48-page report says “serious human rights violations” have been committed in Xinjiang under China’s policies to fight terrorism and extremism, which singled out Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim communities, between 2017 and 2019.
The report cites “patterns of torture” inside what Beijing called vocational centers, which were part of its reputed plan to boost economic development in the region, and it points to “credible” allegations of torture or illtreatment, including cases of sexual violence.
Above all, perhaps, the report warns that the “arbitrary and discriminatory detention” of such groups in Xinjiang, through moves that stripped them of “fundamental rights … may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
The report was drawn from interviews with former detainees and others in the know about conditions at eight separate detention centers in the region. Its authors suggest China was not always forthcoming with information, saying requests for some specific sets of information “did not receive formal response.”
The rights office said it could not confirm estimates of how many people were detained in the internment camps in Xinjiang, but added it was “reasonable to conclude that a pattern of largescale arbitrary detention occurred” at least between 2017 and 2019.
According to information gathered in investigations by other rights monitors and journalists, the Chinese government’s mass detention campaign in Xinjiang swept an estimated million Uyghurs and other ethnic groups into a network of prisons and camps over the past five years.
Beijing has closed many of the camps, but hundreds of thousands continue to languish in prison on vague, secret charges.
Hours before the release, China’s U.N. ambassador, Zhang Jun, said Beijing remained “firmly opposed” to the report’s release.