China has been accused of ‘crimes against humanity’ and ‘genocide’ against Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang for years. Now, a United Nations report points to rape, torture, forced labour and mass sterilisation of women in the northwestern region
China’s human rights record is murky. Now a United Nations report has said “crimes against humanity” may have been committed against Uyghur and other Muslim ethnic groups in the country’s northwestern region of Xinjiang.
Citing “serious” rights violations and patterns of torture in recent years, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a long-awaited report released on Wednesday that the “extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominately Muslim groups… may constitute international crimes, in particular, crimes against humanity”.
The report seeks “urgent attention” from the UN and the world community to rights violations in Beijing’s campaign to root out terrorism.
Who are the Uyghurs?
Uyghur, mostly Muslims, live in China’s Xinjiang, officially known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). About 12 million, the Uyghurs constitute about half of the population in the region, according to a BBC report. They speak a language which is similar to Turkish and consider themselves close to Central Asian nations.
In 1953, the Uyghur population was more than 75 per cent of the region, according to a census cited in the UN report. However, the last few years have seen the Han Chinese – the country’s ethnic minority – migrate to Xinjiang in large numbers. Their numbers have gone up from seven per cent more than six decades ago to 42 per cent now, reports AFP.
This photo taken in May 2019 shows an Uyghur woman going through an entrance to a bazaar in Hotan, in China’s Xinjiang. There are about 12 million Uyghurs in the region. AFP
The state has been accused of allegedly orchestrating the mass migration of the Han Chinese to dilute the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. There have been allegations against the government of targeting Mulsim religious figures, banning religious practices, and destroying mosques in the region.
What atrocities are committed against the Uyghurs?
China has been accused of human rights abuses on a large scale in Xinjiang. The United States and the United Kingdom are among several countries that have accused China of committing genocide, which is described as “the intention to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
According to human rights groups, more than one million Uyghurs have been detained and thousands have been sent to prison over the last few years. Many Uyghur Muslims have been lodged in what the state calls “re-education camps”.
The UN report points to the rape and torture of Uyghurs in the region. AFP
Police files obtained by the BBC in 2022 have revealed exploitation in these camps, where armed officers are deployed and there’s a shoot-to-kill policy in place for those trying to escape. Several media reports suggest that China has been mass sterilising Uyghur women by force to control their population.
Uyghurs inside and outside the camps are exploited for cheap labour and forced to manufacture clothing and other products for sale both at home and abroad.
In 2020, researchers from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, using satellite imagery and other evidence, documented more than 380 “re-education camps” and prisons in Xinjiang.
“It is the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority group since World War II. The concentration camps are the most extreme example of China’s inhumane policies against the Uyghurs, but the entire population is subject to repressive policies. China has used mass surveillance to turn Xinjiang into a high-tech police state,” says a report in Vox.
Why does China ‘target’ Uyghurs?
China believes that Muslim minorities hold extremist views and separatist ideas.
In this photo, a man holds prayer beads as he sits in a shop in Kashgar in 2011. China has been accused of carrying out a genocide against the Uyghurs. AFP
President Xi Jinping warned of the “toxicity of religious extremism” and advocated for using the tools of “dictatorship” to eliminate Islamist extremism in a series of secret speeches while visiting Xinjiang in 2014. In the speeches, revealed by The New York Times in November 2019, Xi did not explicitly call for arbitrary detention but laid the groundwork for the crackdown in Xinjiang, according to Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an independent think-tank.
The Chinese government considers these camps as a way of eliminating threats to the country’s territorial integrity, government, and population.
What does the latest UN report reveal?
The UN report talks about mass sterilisation, forced labour, torture, sexual abuse and possible crimes against humanity. However, it does not call it genocide.
The report describes a “pattern of large-scale arbitrary detention” in Xinjiang, in which individuals suspected of terrorism are held in high-security facilities without due process and for indefinite lengths of time.
Everything from having too many children, wearing a veil or beard, or not using one’s passport is cited as behaviours that can lead authorities to identify individuals as being at risk of “extremism” and mark them for possible detention, reports AFP.
The report says it found “credible” allegations of torture and sexual assault – including rape – at detention centres in Xinjiang.
Former detainees interviewed by the UN describe being beaten while immobilised in “tiger chairs” used by Chinese police to restrain interrogation subjects and being forced to receive unexplained medical treatments, as well as instances of rape and “invasive gynaecological examinations”.
“The government’s blanket denials of all allegations, as well as its gendered and humiliating attacks on those who have come forward to share their experiences… have added to the indignity and suffering of survivors,” the UN report says.
The UN says it spoke to women who recounted being “forced to have abortions or forced to have IUDs inserted”, claims it said are believed to be credible, reports AFP.
Noting a sharp decline in Xinjiang’s birth rates from 2017, the UN’s human rights office says “there are credible indications of violations of reproductive rights through the coercive enforcement of family planning policies”.
This photo taken in June 2019 shows a police checkpoint on a road near a facility believed to be a re-education camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained, north of Akto in China’s western Xinjiang region. As many as one million ethnic Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities are believed to be held in a network of internment camps in Xinjiang. AFP
The UN report says China has “exceptionally broad interpretations of ‘extremism'” that criminalise activities “connected to the enjoyment of cultural and religious life”. Wearing hijabs and giving children Muslim names are flagged as signs of “religious extremism”, which “can lead to serious consequences for persons so identified”, according to the report. It also notes “deeply concerning” reports about the destruction of mosques and cemeteries in Xinjiang.
The report says it found indications that employment programmes in Xinjiang could “involve elements of coercion” echoing long-standing claims by the US and others that forced labour was taking place in the region. The report notes government statements that refer to transferring people from vocational centres to factories, raising questions about “the extent to which such programmes can be considered fully voluntary”.
How has China reacted to the UN report?
China on Thursday said the UN rights office that published a report on serious alleged abuses in Xinjiang was the “thug and accomplice of the US and the West”.
Foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights “has already sunk to (becoming) the thug and accomplice of the US and the West against the vast majority of developing countries”.
With inputs from agencies
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