A United Nations report released on Wednesday states that China has committed “serious human rights violations” against Uyghur Muslims in its Xinjiang province which may amount to “crimes against humanity.”
The report published in the wake of the visit by UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet in May, said that “allegations of patterns of torture, or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence.”
In a strongly-worded assessment, the report stated in context of “restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights, enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
China had urged the UN not to release the report, calling it a “farce” arranged by Western powers.
China has been accused for years of detaining more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the far-western Xinjiang region.
UN investigators said they uncovered “credible evidence” of torture possibly amounting to “crimes against humanity”.
They accused China of using vague national security laws to clamp down on the rights of minorities and establishing “systems of arbitrary detention”.
The report accuses China of forced medical treatment and “discriminatory enforcement of family planning and birth control policies” on the Uyghur community.
The UN recommended that China immediately takes steps to release “all individuals arbitrarily deprived of their liberty.”
While the UN said it could not be sure how many people have been held by the government, human rights groups estimate that more than a million people have been detained at camps in the Xinjiang region.
The report urged Beijing, the UN and the world at large to focus its gaze on the situation described in Xinjiang.
“The human rights situation in XUAR also requires urgent attention by the government, the United Nations intergovernmental bodies and human rights system, as well as the international community more broadly,” the report states.
The 49-page report made no reference to genocide: one of the key allegations made by China’s critics, including the United States and lawmakers in other Western countries.
The World Uyghur Congress, an umbrella group representing about 60 organisations, welcomed the report and urged a swift international response.
“This is a game-changer for the international response to the Uyghur crisis,” Uyghur Human Rights Project Executive Director Omer Kanat said. “Despite the Chinese government’s strenuous denials, the UN has now officially recognized that horrific crimes are occurring.”
The Chinese delegation to the UN human rights council in Geneva rejected the findings of the report, which it said “smeared and slandered China” and interfered in the country’s internal affairs.”
Speaking on Wednesday after Bachelet’s office had announced it would release the report, Zhang Jun, China’s ambassador to the UN in New York, said Beijing had told her that it was “firmly opposed” to the rights assessment.
“The so-called Xinjiang issue is a completely fabricated lie out of political motivations and its purpose is definitely to undermine China’s stability and to obstruct China’s development,” Zhang told reporters.
