By Goodhope Dlangamandla
02:09:2022

The Human Rights Watch said the report by the outgoing UN commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet contains victim accounts that substantiate arbitrary mass detention, torture, cultural persecution, forced labour, and other serious human rights violations. It recommends that state businesses and the international community take action to end the abuses and advance justice and accountability.

Radio Islam International discussed with the senior China researcher in the Asia division at Human Rights Watch, Maya Wang, why the UN report was in the pipeline since May and was released only in August.

Maya said that the High Commissioner’s office had to establish facts remotely as the Chinese government did not give the office access to the region as requested by the UN. The second reason was that the office was subjected to a lot of pressure from the Chinese government.

Further, a combination of these factors makes establishing facts in a report difficult for an office that requires that level of accuracy at the UN.

Maya pointed out the importance of the United Nations report that, as an international organisation, it makes the Chinese government’s denial increasingly difficult on the international stage. The Chinese government must answer why these abuses occur and hold officials accountable.

She said the UN report outlines a vast number of these abuses.

“The document says the use of arbitrary mass detention, the use of force, labour torture, and reproductive violations and say these abuses may constitute crimes against humanity. So that is a damning report for the Chinese government, and hopefully, it will lead to some pressure for accountability for the powerful state that has so far in the past been largely let off the hook when it commits increasingly abusive acts in China,” she said.

Maya said that the outgoing Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet’s visit to China in April was not intended to pursue an investigation but rather a meet and greet with the Chinese officials.

“She did travel to the Xinjiang region in China but was not allowed to essentially meet with anyone, or we do not know very much about that. But she was not allowed to give full access enough for an investigation. She herself also said that that was not an investigation, but it was a visit to press for some other priorities concerning issues like climate change with the Chinese government,” she explained.

However, in the absence of that required access for a complete investigative report, the UN office took into account all the available information about Xinjiang that is openly and publicly accessible, including the Chinese government’s documents.

She says the UN report is quite clever as it extensively quotes the Chinese government’s policies on it and concludes that even according to their policies, it spells out a discriminatory and repressive set of policies that, together with this other information available, including lead government documents may constitute crimes against humanity.

She said this makes the report strong.

She added that the US is one of the forward governments in holding the Chinese government accountable for these crimes. However, other governments like the UK and EU have also sanctioned high-level Xinjiang government officials for these abuses, but it is not enough.

She said the Human Rights Watch is advocating that these governments take further actions, for example, pushing at the UN human rights council for this report to be presented to the UN human rights council so that other member states can act. For example, set up a special investigation into the abuses like the commission of inquiry or have someone that can interview victims and push for further accountability at the UN level.

Outside the UN, she said that they were also hoping that other governments who have not been using their sanction mechanisms or that have not spoken out against these abuses like many Muslim majority countries, may have even spoken in support of the Chinese government on the issue of Xinjiang would speak out against these abuses, given the overwhelming evidence.

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