what the UN report says about the abuses committed in China

UYGHUR. The UN released a report on August 31, 2022 pointing out the Chinese government’s actions against the Uyghur Muslim community. By describing potential “crimes against humanity”.

The United Nations (UN) has now officially recognized the fact that the Chinese regime is committing serious abuses against Uyghur Muslims on its soil, in the Xinjiang region. In a report published on Wednesday August 31, 2022, in the last hour of Michelle Bachelet’s mandate, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) describes the situation in China in very clear terms. “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”, can we read in particular in this official document, available online.

For several years, several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have denounced discrimination and displacement of populations in camps as well as the careful organization of a strategy depriving tens of thousands of Muslims of their freedoms. The UN, which has traveled to China to observe – as much as the authorities allowed them – factual elements, has given pledges to what was hitherto denounced by Western observers. “Allegations of recurring practices of torture or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and poor conditions of detention, are credible, as are individual allegations of sexual and gender-based violence,” writes in particular the UN.

The UN report on the Uyghurs, a turning point?

Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress reacted quickly to the publication of this report. “This document paves the way for serious and tangible action by member states, UN agencies and companies. The time for accountability is now,” he said in an official statement. The NGO Human Rights Watch for China considered, in a press release published on September 1, that the UN now had a moral obligation to “use this report to launch a comprehensive investigation into the government’s crimes against humanity. Chinese”.

Among the strongest reactions, that of Germany appears to be one of the most significant. The German Foreign Ministry has judged “that there is cause for concern at the highest point”, in a press release. “All those arbitrarily detained must be released immediately,” Berlin added, calling on Beijing “to immediately grant all people of Xinjiang the full exercise of their human rights” and “allow a new independent investigation into these allegations of serious violations. human rights in China”.

China lambasted the publication of the UN report on the Uyghurs, bluntly accusing the United Nations of lies orchestrated under pressure from Western countries: “The OHCHR created this report from scratch, relying on the political conspiracy of some anti-Chinese forces overseas.This is a serious violation of the responsibilities of OHCHR, the principles of universality, non-selectivity, objectivity and non-politicization.It proves once moreover that the OHCHR has become the henchman and the accomplice of the United States and the West to punish (…) developing countries”, declared in a press conference Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Chinese.