China: UN should act on crimes against humanity
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, should provide a public update of measures taken by the Chinese government and by his office to address the human rights situation in Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, ISHR, and the World Uyghur Congress said today, releasing a series of translations of the report by his office on Xinjiang published in 2022.
The Office of the High Commissioner’s 2022 report concluded that violations in the region ‘may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity’. The ongoing absence of public reporting by the High Commissioner to follow-up the atrocity crimes documented by his own office risks undermining the trust placed in his office by victims and survivors. At the same time, UN Member States need to take more determined action to fight against impunity.
In August 2023, the High Commissioner’s spokesperson stated that the situation in Xinjiang ‘remains of concern’ and stressed that the August 2022 assessment was ‘clear on the need for accountability. We continue to stand by that, publicly and bilaterally.’ In March 2024, the High Commissioner urged the Chinese government to implement recommendations of his office and other UN bodies, including those from the 2022 report.
In his opening remarks at the UN Human Rights Council on 18 June, the High Commissioner said he had ‘continued to engage’ with the Chinese government on ‘a range of human rights issues’ including ‘the serious concerns […] in the Xinjiang region’. He raised concerns over the national security laws in Hong Kong and individual cases of concern, and deplored the sentencing of the arbitrarily detained Chinese human rights defenders Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing (who went unnamed).
However, he did not provide any specifics about his engagement with the government, a substantive update on the situation in Xinjiang, nor an assessment of the implementation of the report recommendations by his office. Nearly two years on, it is imperative that he and his office provide details on their efforts to prevent, and seek accountability for, crimes against humanity and other human rights violations and abuses.
Since the release of the August 2022 report, the Chinese government has continued to arbitrarily imprison hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and to erase expressions of Uyghur identity as part of its crackdown on the region. On 31 May, Beijing rejected nearly 30 Universal Periodic Review recommendations on the Uyghur region, and has yet to implement dozens of recommendations from numerous UN human rights experts and committees, including the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
Rights groups have consistently called on the High Commissioner and his office to publicly brief the international community on the Xinjiang report, and take concrete action to follow up on the recommendations and advance accountability for any international crimes and other serious human rights violations in China.
They have also urged States at the Human Rights Council to take overdue action to open a comprehensive independent international investigation, with a similar call coming on three occasions from United Nations experts on June 2020, June 2022, and September 2022.
Despite a nearly successful effort to put China formally on the agenda of the UN’s top rights body in October 2022, little further action has been taken to follow up.
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