Updated Aug. 28, 2024, 1:30 p.m. EDT.
Two years after the U.N.’s human rights chief said China’s repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang may constitute “crimes against humanity,” her successor on Tuesday called for a full investigation into the charges, while rights groups demanded more pressure on Beijing.
On Aug. 31, 2022, in a long-awaited report issued on her last day on the job, then U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said that "serious human rights violations" were committed in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in the context of the Chinese government's application of counter-terrorism and counter-extremism strategies.
Her successor, Volker Türk, has repeatedly called on China to address concerns documented in the damning, 46-page Bachelet report, including China's arbitrary detention of Uyghurs and the separation of children from their families. UN efforts, however, have met angry denunciations and stonewalling by Chinese diplomats.
On Tuesday, Türk’s office in Geneva repeated its call for action.
“On Xinjiang, we understand that many problematic laws and policies remain in place, and we have called again on the authorities to undertake a full review, from the human rights perspective, of the legal framework governing national security and counter-terrorism and to strengthen the protection of minorities against discrimination,” the office of UN rights chief said in a statement Tuesday.
“Allegations of human rights violations, including torture, need to be fully investigated,” said Ravina Shamdasan, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland.
“We are also continuing to follow closely the current human rights situation in China, despite the difficulties posed by limited access to information and the fear of reprisals against individuals who engage with the United Nations,” added Shamdasan.
The statement also urged Beijing to “take prompt steps to release all individuals arbitrarily deprived of their liberty, and to clarify the status and whereabouts of those whose families have been seeking information about them.”
Asked about the statement at a regular news briefing in Beijing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian reiterated China's previous statements on the Xinjiang issue.
"Xinjiang today enjoys social stability and economic growth and the people there live a happy life. It is at its best in history where people of all ethnic groups are working together for a better life," he said.
Lin said China was open to "constructive exchange and cooperation" with the UN rights watchdog, but urged the agency to "reject acts that politicize human rights or stoke division and confrontation, and refrain from being used by political forces aiming at containing and vilifying China."
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The new statement was welcomed by human rights groups and experts, but they also urged more pressure to overcome Chinese resistance that had prevented progress on the issue since the August 2022 report.
“Two years ago, we welcomed OHCHR’s report on the human rights situation facing the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in China. Since then, sadly, we have seen little else to raise awareness of, or improve, their plight,” said Kat Cosgrove of the U.S. watchdog group Freedom House.
“The United Nations has a responsibility to continue to use all the tools at their disposal to push the CCP to end their persecution and repression, including allowing independent investigators full access to Xinjiang,” Cosgrove, Freedom House’s deputy director of policy and advocacy, told RFA Uyghur.
The International Service for Human Rights (ISHR), a human rights advocacy group, also gave a guarded welcome to the High Commission’s statement, but urged concrete actions from the UN agency, including setting up a monitoring and reporting outfit to “put an end to China’s exceptionalism.”
The ISHR, based in Geneva and New York, quoted Uyghur human rights lawyer Rayhan Asat, as saying the new statement that Türk’s office was “committed to tangible change in China is heartening.”
“Yet, China has not implemented any OHCHR recommendations, and independent investigations are still limited or blocked,” she added.
Luis Fernando Cohn Pelaez of UN Watch, a human rights watchdog based in Geneva that monitors the UN, said Bachelet was "weak" and moved too slowly on the Uyghur rights crisis.
"The UN was too late to take measures against China. The UN’s weakness contributed to the current deterioration of the Uyghur situation," he told RFA.
The U.S. government has since 2021 accused Beijing of carrying out a campaign of “genocide” against Uyghurs and other Muslims in far-west Xinjiang, including by sterilizing women, banning the exercise of culture and imprisoning many Uyghurs in high-security internment camps.
The UN and Western governments have remained steadfast in their condemnation of China over its harsh policies affecting Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hongkongers, though Beijing has angrily denied accusations of abuses and continued maintaining an iron grip on them.
Uyghur exile and advocacy groups believe that the United Nations and individual states have failed to take concrete measures to punish China for severe rights violations in Xinjiang, including mass detentions, torture, cultural genocide, forced labor and the forced sterilization of Uyghur women.
China denies it has committed rights abuses against the 11 million Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking group that refers to Xinjiang -- the vast mountainous and desert region traversed by the Silk Road -- as East Turkestan.
Reporting by Gulchehra Hoja for RFA Uyghur. Translated by Alim Seytoff. Editing by Paul Eckert.
Updated with China's reaction.