Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international human rights watchdog, in a recent statement lamented the Chinese government for its human rights abuses in Xinjiang, claiming that the authorities have been persistently committing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang.
The statement by the HRW came on the second anniversary of the release of the United Nations human rights office’s damning report on Xinjiang from August 2022.
While commenting on the situation, Maya Wang, the associate China director at Human Rights Watch, stated, “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. Contrary to the Chinese government’s claims, its punitive campaign against millions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang continues to inflict great pain.”
Further, the HRW statement claimed that for over past two years, the Chinese government has dismissed all calls to end its severe repression in Xinjiang, which includes mass arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, separation of families, forced labour, sexual violence, and violations of reproductive rights.
Thousands of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang continue to remain wrongfully imprisoned, wherein their relatives living domestically and abroad have little to no contact with their families in China. Many live with the uncertainty about whether their loved ones, sometimes dozens of their family and relatives, remain detained, imprisoned, or forcibly disappeared.
Some families do not know if their relatives who have been taken into custody are even still alive. And the ones that have been released, continue to remain subjected to strict police surveillance and further restrictions on their rights, the HRW statement claimed.
Additionally, on August 27, 2024, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, acknowledged that in Xinjiang “many problematic laws and policies remain in place,” and reported that his office continues to press the Chinese authorities to free those being held in arbitrary detention and clarify the status and whereabouts of those missing.
Turk also said that his office was “continuing to advocate for implementation” of its recommendations, even though the Chinese delegation has continued to reject all recommendations from the 2022 Xinjiang report.
Additionally, the Chinese authorities have also dismissed the report as “illegal and void” in reference to the UN Universal Periodic Review of China’s human rights record in July.
“The UN human rights commissioner has recognised that many of the ‘problematic laws and policies’ that led to the abusive crackdown against Uyghurs remain in place. Two years since the UN Human Rights Office report concluded that abuses in Xinjiang ‘may constitute crimes against humanity,’ the office needs to issue an update on the current situation in Xinjiang and present a concrete action plan for holding those responsible to account,” he added.
