The United Nations has released its highly-anticipated report into human rights violations in China
A scathing report has unearthed China’s treatment of Uyghur people in the Xinjiang province.
The UN-backed report found China may have committed “crimes against humanity” against the ethnic minority group.
It describes the Chinese Communist Party’s counter-terrorism methods as “deeply problematic”.
“It contains vague, broad and open-ended concepts that leave wide discretion to officials to interpret and apply broad investigative, preventive and coercive powers, in a context of limited safeguards and scant independent oversight.”
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The report was delivered minutes before the incumbent UN Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet, left her post after a four-year term.
It found a “large-scale arbitrary deprivation of liberty” of Uyghur and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region, which remains under tight secrecy by Chinese authorities.
In some cases, people were locked in vocational education and training centres, where their treatment was of “concern”.
Ms Bachelet recently travelled to the Xinjiang region despite warnings from China.
The UN believes the ‘vocational training centres’ include Uyghurs “being beaten with batons”, and being strapped in the “tiger chair”.
“Allegations of patterns of torture or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence.”
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Sophie Richardson is the China Director at Human Rights Watch, who says the report “lays bare China’s sweeping rights abuses”.
The country is denying any allegations of abuses, or forced labour in detention camps.
Earlier this year, the nation’s Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Hua Chunying, said any allegations of genocide are a “whopping big lie”.
“Every such lie diminishes the credibility of the U.S. Government,” she said.
The UN report notes there are policies and laws underpinning these abuses, which would make it difficult to change even if the so-called ‘training centres’ were closed.
It follows three years of UN promises and months of investigations by authorities.
