China clearly wanted to prevent publication of long-delayed United Nations report into its treatment of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang province, which finally appeared last week - just a few minutes before the term of the commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, came to an end.

 Beijing tried to stop its release, so human rights groups were apprehensive after Bachelet’s visit to Xinjiang in May concluded with a statement that many said supported the Chinese government’s narrative. But Wednesday’s report turned out to be damning. It said that Chinese authorities were committing human rights abuses against Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang that could constitute crimes against humanity. There are about 12 million Uyghurs, mostly Muslim, living in the province.

 Xinjiang lies in the north-west of China and is the country's largest region. Like Tibet, it is autonomous, meaning - in theory - it has some powers of self-governance. But in practice, both regions are subjected to serious restrictions by the central government.

 Human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million Uyghurs against their will over the past few years in a large network of what the state calls "re-education camps", and sentenced hundreds of thousands to prison terms.

 Publication of the report was delayed by the eleventh-hour delivery of an official Chinese response that contained names and pictures of individuals that had to be blacked out by the UN commissioner’s office for privacy and safety reasons. Beijing rejected it as an anti-China smear, while Uyghur human rights groups hailed it as a turning point in the international response to the program of mass incarceration.

 Notably, it did not mention “genocide”  – a term used by the US and lawmakers in several other countries to describe the situation in Xinjiang – but it said widespread allegations of torture, including forced medical procedures and sexual violence, were “credible”.

 Coming just weeks after tensions with the US over Taiwan, it added to pressure on China, which reacted aggressively to the criticism of its treatment of the Uyghurs. Beijing condemned the report as “based on the disinformation and lies fabricated by anti-China forces” and that it “wantonly smears and slanders” China and interfered in the country’s internal affairs.

 The report has long been the subject of intense international attention, with Bachelet admitting the week before last that she had been under "tremendous pressure to publish or not to publish" from 40 countries. China has always insisted that Uyghur militants are waging a violent campaign for an independent state, but it is accused of exaggerating the threat in order to justify repression of the Uyghurs.

 The top line of the report was that the commissioner’s office found credible evidence of torture and other human rights abuses that were likely to be “crimes against humanity”. It included allegations of people being strapped by their hands and feet to a “tiger chair” and beaten, women raped, and others held in extended solitary confinement. Others appeared to have been waterboarded, as the report described individuals “being subjected to interrogation with water being poured in their faces”.

 And the report was also highly critical of the Chinese government’s anti-extremism doctrine, which underpins the crackdown. It said the laws and regulations were vague and ill-defined, open to individual interpretation, and blurred the line between indicators of concern and suspected criminality. Both categories also contained a copious number of benign acts classed as extremism despite having no connection to it, such as having a beard or a social media account.

 In May Bachelet embarked on a six-day trip to China amid warnings that she risked causing lasting damage to the credibility of her office if she went ahead with the visit to Xinjiang. In June, she came under fire as academics across Europe accused her of having ignored or contradicted academic findings on abuses in Xinjiang with her statements on the region.

 At the end of her visit she adopted Chinese-government euphemisms, framing re-education camps in the region as a response to terrorism and calling them “vocational educational training centres”. When answering questions from Chinese state media, she criticised racism and rights violations in America. That is a favourite tactic of China’s government: pointing out America’s flaws in order to distract attention from its own.

 Last year, the UK, together with the EU, US and Canada, imposed sanctions on four Chinese officials in response to human rights abuses. The following month British MPs voted to declare that China was committing genocide against the Uyghurs. The motion, however, did not compel the government to act. And when the Joe Biden administration declared a genocide was taking place in Xinjiang, London refused to follow suit. “This vast apparatus of state repression could not exist if a plan was not authorised at the highest levels,” said a highly-experienced lawyer who represented the attorneys’ group.

 In a rapidly-changing and increasingly divided world this UN report could well turn out to have been a key moment in China’s history. The Uyghur issue is not going to disappear any time soon.

 

BY: IAN BLACK