The United Nations has asked member states not to repatriate vulnerable Muslims to China, where an assessment of government-sanctioned practices in Xinjiang concluded "serious human rights violations" had been committed.
The long-awaited report by the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) was published minutes before midnight in Geneva on Wednesday as the four-year term of Michelle Bachelet, the UN's top rights official, concluded. Rights groups and Western diplomats said her office had delayed publication by more than a year while trying to arrange a personal visit to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China.
Bachelet herself said this week that Beijing had sent a letter—co-signed by "40 or 50 countries"—to lobby against the report. Chinese officials say the government's years-long crackdown on ethnic Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and Huis was done in the name of countering "terrorism and extremism." Accusations of human rights abuses, they say, are an attack on China's image by the West.
Despite pressure both to publish and withhold the report, Bachelet's office insisted the findings would be made public before her mandate ended.
"States should further refrain from returning members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim minorities to China who are at risk of refoulement and provide humanitarian assistance, including medical and psycho-social support, to victims in the States in which they are located," the report said in its list of recommendations.
Under international law, the principle of "non-refoulement" forbids the forcible return of refugees or asylum seekers to their country of origin, where they are liable to face persecution.
This chart, provided by Statista, shows asylum grants in the U.S. to the eight most common nationalities in FY 2020.
The OHCHR report largely supports the findings of extensive studies conducted by researchers and rights groups. While it was unable to confirm what human rights organizations said was the internment of more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslims—Beijing didn't supply relevant statistics on request, the office said—the report concluded that "large-scale arbitrary deprivation of liberty" occurred at least between 2017 and 2019.
China says its program of "vocational education and training centers"—for the stated goal of reeducating and deradicalizing Xinjiang's population—has been wound down. However, researchers found "the laws and policies that underpin it remain in place," pointing to instances of forced labor, mass surveillance and population control. Detention facilities were likened to concentration camps.
"There are serious indications of violations of reproductive rights through the coercive and discriminatory enforcement of family planning and birth control policies," the UN Human Rights Office said.
"The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups…may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity," it said.
The international governing body recommended that Beijing "release all individuals arbitrarily deprived of their liberty" and "urgently clarifies the whereabouts of individuals whose families have been seeking information about their loved ones in XUAR."
China should undertake "a full review of the legal framework governing national security, counter-terrorism and minority rights in XUAR to ensure their compliance with binding international human rights law," it continued.
The UN also suggested "adequate remedy and reparation to victims of human rights violations."
The UN said its 46-page report gave "particular attention" to the Chinese government's own laws, policies, statistics, court decisions, official statements and white papers. It conducted 40 interviews with "individuals with direct and first-hand knowledge of the situation," 26 of whom either were former detainees or had worked in facilities across Xinjiang since 2016.
The methodology's reliance on official sources from China may make the report's findings difficult to credibly refute. The UN's references to prominent research also adds heft to those works, although it did not use the word "genocide," as had the U.S. and other Western governments in separate reports.
As part of standard practice, the OHCHR said it shared a draft of the report with Beijing for comments before publication. China's 122-page response—three times longer than the UN assessment—was published as an appendix. In it, the Chinese government's position on Xinjiang remained unchanged.
"We firmly oppose this so-called 'assessment' which is not mandated by the Human Rights Council, smears and slanders China, and interferes in China's internal affairs. It seriously violates the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and undermines the credibility and impartiality of the OHCHR," Beijing's mission in Geneva said in a statement on its website.
China's response also included what appeared to be an attempt to deflect from the sensitive findings, which come just weeks before the Chinese Communist Party is set to extend General Secretary Xi Jinping's rule over the country for another five years.
"We suggest that UN human rights agencies and other international organizations should investigate the human rights disasters caused and numerous crimes committed by the US and some other Western countries both at home and abroad," it said.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
John Feng is Newsweek's contributing editor for Asia based in Taichung, Taiwan. His focus is on East Asian politics. He ... Read more
