China Likely Guilty of ‘Crimes against Humanity,’ U.N. Says
The United Nations determined in a report Wednesday that China could be guilty of actions that “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity” in its mass detention of the Uyghur Muslims and other marginalized communities in Xinjiang.
The report does not use the word “genocide,” though the U.S. has applied that term to Beijing’s detention and sterilization of religious minorities, but it discusses the brutality inflicted upon Uyghurs, Kazakhs and others in China’s camps.
China has imprisoned individuals deemed “at risk” of extremism or deemed a “potential threat to society,” it wrote in a 2019 White Paper on “Vocational Education and Training in Xinjiang.”
Horrors these ethnic minorities have reported include interrogation and torture, corporal punishment, religious persecution, sexual violence, inhumane medical treatment, indoctrination, prohibitions on detainees speaking their native tongue, compulsory labor, forced birth control, abortion, among other abuses.
In great detail, the report describes victim testimonies and accounts and presents overwhelming evidence of China’s oppression in Xinjiang, which Beijing has categorically denied.
The report is “an unprecedented challenge to Beijing’s lies and horrific treatment of Uyghurs,” Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch told the New York Times. “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.”
Uyghur activists weren’t confident that Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, who had been accused of delaying the report at the behest of China, would produce such a sweeping condemnation of the country’s activities. Bachelet, who leaves her post soon, said she “wanted to take the greatest care to deal with the responses and inputs received from the (Chinese) government last week.”
China had reportedly tried to bully Bachelet not to release the exposé. Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, called the report a “farce orchestrated by the United States and a small number of Western powers” at a press conference Wednesday.
In committing each of its offenses, such as forced labor, China has justified it as a means to combat terrorism in the country. For example, the government links poverty alleviation schemes to preventing extremism, which was noted in a September 2020 White Paper on “Employment and Labour Rights in Xinjiang.”
“Terrorists, separatists, extremists…incite the public to resist learning the standard spoken and written Chinese language, reject modern science, and refuse to improve their vocational skills, economic conditions, and the ability to better their own lives,” China wrote as its explanation for Uyghur long-term poverty. This resistance to enlightenment from Uyghurs requires their re-education and forced labor, China has suggested.
The report notes that one of the first red flags the U.N. noticed in China’s conduct was the large numbers of people in Xinjiang alleged to be “forcibly disappeared.”
After detailing each Chinese abuse for which the U.N. has collected evidence, the report lays out the international and Chinese laws that have been violated.
“These human rights violations flow from a domestic ‘anti-terrorism law system’ that is deeply problematic from the perspective of international human rights norms and standards,” the report concludes.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, however, did not prescribe any forceful international response to China other than to improve its human rights record of its own accord, follow its own human rights protections, and to cease “immediately all intimidation and reprisals against Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim minorities abroad in connection with their advocacy…”
