On August 27, United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk renewed calls for Beijing to strengthen protections of minorities in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region and to fully investigate “allegations of human rights violations, including torture.”
The appeal comes nearly two years after the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a report, which found Beijing’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in China “may constitute international crimes,” particularly “crimes against humanity.”
In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said China was ready to have a “constructive exchange” with the OHCHR, but warned it to “refrain from being used by political forces aiming at containing and vilifying China.”
Lin then repeated a well-worn Chinese propaganda talking point that people in Xinjiang were enjoying historic levels of happiness and prosperity.
“People of all ethnic groups in China are equal and their legitimate rights and interests are fully protected,” Lin said. “Xinjiang today enjoys social stability and economic growth and the people there live a happy life.”
That is false.
While China has invested billions of dollars to develop resource-rich Xinjiang and turn it into a driver of economic growth, those efforts have been coupled with grave human rights abuses.
A wide body of evidence suggests Chinese authorities have subjected Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang to mass internment, forced sterilization, torture, sexual violence, forced labor, religious repression and other forms of cultural erasure.
At the heart of this repressive system are Beijing’s internment camps, where the government has detained an estimated 1.8 million people in Xinjiang.
China portrays those detention facilities as vocational training centers aimed at eliminating poverty and extremism.
But U.S. lawmakers have shared ample documentation that Chinese authorities use the camps to subject detainees to “forced labor, torture, political indoctrination, and other severe human rights abuses.”
China claimed it has since closed those facilities after the individuals who passed through them succeeded in finding better work.
In April 2021, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) identified 385 detention sites through a years-long process using satellite imagery, construction contracts, government documents and eye-witness testimony.
ASPI said China built or expanded those 385 facilities between 2017 and 2021.
There is evidence authorities have shuttered some of those facilities, although Beijing’s strict control of media and the lack of government transparency complicates verification efforts.
To verify the ASPI’s claims, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) team traveled to 26 of the 385 documented sites.
In their report, published in September 2023, AFP said 10 of the 26 sites “appeared operational,” but authorities did not grant them access, thwarting attempts to “identify anyone who was indisputably incarcerated.”
International news crews attempting to report on the ground in Xinjiang have repeatedly faced roadblocks.
Further complicating verification efforts, China regularly targets the family members of Uyghur activists who speak out against rights abuses.
In August, Tahir Imin, a U.S.-based Uyghur activist, told VOA that authorities had prosecuted six of his former business associates, and 28 of his family members, because of their “association” with him.
In June, a U.N. human rights expert said that China had detained Gulshan Abbas, a Uyghur doctor in Xinjiang, six days after her sister criticized the persecution of Uyghurs at an event in Washington D.C.
The U.N. expert said the Chinese government sentenced Abbas to 20 years on unfounded terrorism-related charges to retaliate for her sister’s activism.
Six Uyghur reporters from Radio Free Asia, a VOA sister organization, stated dozens of their family members had been detained and sent to camps “for ill-defined reasons.”
“Beijing’s brazen refusal to meaningfully address well-documented crimes in Xinjiang is no surprise, but shows the need for a robust follow-up by the UN human rights chief and UN member states,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch.