The United Nations has asked member states not to repatriate vulnerable Muslims to China, where an assessment of government-sanctioned practices in Xinjiang concluded "serious human rights violations" had been committed.
The long-awaited report by the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) was published minutes before midnight in Geneva on Wednesday as the four-year term of Michelle Bachelet, the UN's top rights official, concluded. Rights groups and Western diplomats said her office had delayed publication by more than a year while trying to arrange a personal visit to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China.
Bachelet herself said this week that Beijing had sent a letter—co-signed by "40 or 50 countries"—to lobby against the report. Chinese officials say the government's years-long crackdown on ethnic Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and Huis was done in the name of countering "terrorism and extremism." Accusations of human rights abuses, they say, are an attack on China's image by the West.Despite pressure both to publish and withhold the report, Bachelet's office insisted the findings would be made public before her mandate ended.States should further refrain from returning members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim minorities to China who are at risk of refoulement and provide humanitarian assistance, including medical and psycho-social support, to victims in the States in which they are located," the report said in its list of recommendations.
Under international law, the principle of "non-refoulement" forbids the forcible return of refugees or asylum seekers to their country of origin, where they are liable to face persecution.
The OHCHR report largely supports the findings of extensive studies conducted by researchers and rights groups. While it was unable to confirm what human rights organizations said was the internment of more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslims—Beijing didn't supply relevant statistics on request, the office said—the report concluded that "large-scale arbitrary deprivation of liberty" occurred at least between 2017 and 2019.
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China says its program of "vocational education and training centers"—for the stated goal of reeducating and deradicalizing Xinjiang's population—has been wound down. However, researchers found "the laws and policies that underpin it remain in place," pointing to instances of forced labor, mass surveillance and population control. Detention facilities were likened to concentration camps.
There are serious indications of violations of reproductive rights through the coercive and discriminatory enforcement of family planning and birth control policies," the UN Human Rights Office said.
"The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups…may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity," it said.