On August 31, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released its “Assessment of Human Rights Concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China.”

In 2017, the UN started receiving allegations of abuse from non-governmental organizations, think tanks, and media outlets, prompting the investigation. Since then, numerous research reports have been published alleging arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence and forced sterilizations, forced labor, and other ill-treatment of up to a million people.

Years in the making, with attempted blocks and delays by the Chinese government, the report offers a damning assessment of widespread human rights abuses committed against the people of the ethnic Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim minority communities.

BREAKING: UN human rights chief’s report on #Xinjiang #China says authorities’ abuses “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

The report “lays bare China’s sweeping rights abuses,” says @SophieHRW. pic.twitter.com/u6Ug9s92YR

— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) August 31, 2022

The investigation found a marked increase in criminal arrests, convictions, and the improvision of lengthy prison sentences, along with mass referrals of individuals to what China calls “re-education camps.”

The Chinese government denied the camps altogether until satellite imagery confirmed their existence. At that point, China released an official statement that the “Xinjiang- related issues are in essence about countering violent terrorism and separatism,” Further, they claimed that they were doing so “in accordance with law.” Chinese officials insisted that the facilities were voluntary and contributed to the region's development, job creation, and poverty alleviation.

The report states that China’s indicators for identifying persons “at risk” of extremism do not serve as actual and substantive indicators but are merely manifestations of personal choice in matters of religion and cultural preference. China’s Criminal Procedure Law allows authorities to use electronic surveillance and a series of restrictive measures on “suspects,” including orders not to leave the city, not to use public transport, not to communicate with particular persons, to hand over passports, and for mandatory periodic check-ins. According to the law, a person can be in detention for 37 days before any formal review, which the UN calls an abuse of power.

Further, the UN asserts that there is a lack of free and informed consent to being placed in the “centers,” that it is impossible for an individual detained to leave of their own free will, and that the stay in facilities is of indefinite nature, which the UN classifies as deprivation of liberty.

The UN investigators interviewed twenty-six former detainees, two-thirds of which reported torture. According to the report, accounts included “being beaten with batons, including electric batons while strapped in a so-called ‘tiger chair’, being subjected to interrogation with water being poured in their faces, prolonged solitary confinement, and being forced to sit motionless on small stools for prolonged periods of time.” Sleep deprivation and withheld food were also reported, as well as not being allowed to speak their language and having constant guards to ensure cellmates were not praying. Almost all detainees said pills and injections being administered daily, forced nudity, and sexual violence, including rape. The High Commissioner's Office received allegations of suspicious deaths inside the centers, which it could not verify.

“We were forced to sing patriotic song after patriotic song every day,” said one former detainee, “as loud as possible and until it hurts, until our faces become red and our veins appear on our face.”

BREAKING

"UN Confirms Conclusive Evidence of Atrocities Against Uyghurs"

Joint statement from 60 Uyghur organizations in response to UN report citing possible crimes against humanity against Uyghurs.@UyghurProject @UyghurCongresshttps://t.co/22TDZRYMWk

— Uyghur Human Rights Project (@UyghurProject) August 31, 2022

While the UN report found credible evidence of human rights violations that could be classified as crimes against humanity, many rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, fully concur. “Beijing’s repeated denial of the human rights crisis in Xinjiang rings ever more hollow with this further recognition of the evidence of ongoing crimes against humanity and other human rights violations in the region,” said Agnes Callamard, Amnesty’s Secretary-General.

China’s diplomatic mission in Geneva strongly opposed the findings and issued a note to accompany the UN report. “Based on disinformation and lies fabricated by anti-China forces and out of the presumption of guilt, the so-called assessment distorts China’s laws, wantonly smears and slanders China, and interferes in China’s internal affairs”, it stated. Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said, “It is a patchwork of false information that serves as a political tool for the US and other Western countries to strategically use Xinjiang to contain China.”

Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, a leading British human rights lawyer, called the report “better than nothing, or a very small step forward, but no more than that,” disappointed by the absence of the term ‘genocide.’ He is not alone in his assessment. Rahima Mahmut, executive director at the UK’s Stop Uyghur Genocide, said she was disappointed that the report did not “call this what it is - a genocide.”

Analysis: A UN report on human rights in Xinjiang is damning of China. But Uyghur and rights groups wonder if anything will change. https://t.co/eK2XUbc6Xg

— CNN (@CNN) September 2, 2022

The former US secretary of state, Milke Pompeo, declared on his way out of office in early 2021 that China is committing ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs. “I believe this genocide is ongoing and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party state,” he said. The Biden administration reaffirmed this stance in a state department report this past April. An unofficial tribunal based in London voiced its agreement last December without government backing.

According to Nice, the absence of the term genocide “makes it easier for states to say the matter is not proved and so nothing need be done.”