Despite pressure from Beijing, the UN has finally released its long-awaited report on human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region. Press release Wednesday August 31 shortly before midnight, the document evokes possible “crimes against humanity” and reports “credible evidence” of torture and sexual violence against the Uyghur minority. “The extent of the arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of the Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim groups (…) may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity”, indicates, in its conclusions, the report of just under fifty pages.
Michelle Bachelet, for whom it was the last day at the head of the High Commissioner after a four-year mandate, thus keeps her promise in extremis by publishing the document from Geneva. “I’ve been under tremendous pressure to post or not post, but those pressures aren’t going to make me post it or stop posting it,” she explained last week during an interview. Last May, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights spent four days in this region of northwestern China, where many ethnic minorities, including the Uyghurs, come from.
If it does not seem to contain any revelations compared to what was already known about the situation in Xinjiang, this document brings the seal of the UN to the accusations leveled for a long time against the Chinese authorities. The organization calls on the international community to act urgently in the face of accusations of torture and sexual violence in Xinjiang. “Allegations of recurring practices of torture or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and poor prison conditions, are credible, as are individual allegations of sexual and gender-based violence,” writes the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
However, the report does not mention the word genocide. An accusation brought against Beijing by the American government, but also by the French National Assembly or even the representations of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands or Canada. Western studies, based on interpretations of official documents, testimonies of alleged victims and statistical extrapolations, accuse Beijing of having interned in “camps” at least a million people, mostly Uyghurs, of carrying out sterilizations and abortions “forced”, or to impose “forced labour”. The UN does not corroborate this figure but notes “that a significant proportion” of Uyghurs and Muslim minorities were interned.
Unsurprisingly, China denies these accusations and claims that the “camps” are in fact “vocational training centers” intended to keep residents away from religious extremism, and which are now said to be closed. The document is based “on disinformation and fabricated lies by anti-China forces” and “wantonly defames and slanders China and interferes in China’s internal affairs”, writes the Chinese Embassy to the UN at Geneva in the comment attached to the report.