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Police officers stand at the outer entrance of the Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center in western China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, April 23, 2021.
Photo:
Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press
The United Nations is too often a protectorate for dictators—see its failure to do much against Russia’s war on Ukraine. But once in a while some part of Turtle Bay can muster the nerve to tell an uncomfortable truth and maybe do some good.
That’s the case this week with the release of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights report on the repression of Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province. It chronicles “serious human rights violations” that “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
The document’s release is a minor miracle considering China’s furious effort to suppress it. China uses its influence at the U.N. to blunt criticism on everything from human rights to Covid. High Commissioner
Michelle Bachelet,
a former President of Chile and a woman of the left, released the report Wednesday after lengthy delays and literally in the last moments of her tenure, and kudos to her.
The report, initiated after the U.N. outfit received “serious allegations of human-rights violations” in late 2017, confirms that Beijing has detained “a substantial portion” of Uyghur Muslims.
Adrian Zenz
of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has estimated the detainees at one to two million overall. The United States says China’s treatment of the Uyghurs amounts to genocide, though the U.N. report avoids that term.
Beijing says the camps are “vocational training and education centers” used to de-radicalize terrorists and extremists. Yet the U.N. report notes that detainees are deprived of due process and legal representation.
Former detainees told the U.N. of “treatment that would amount to torture and/or other forms of ill-treatment.” That includes beatings with rods or electric batons or being constrained in “tiger chairs,” which resembles a metal high chair with shackles for wrists and ankles.
Uyghurs were prevented from praying or speaking their own language and forced to study Communist propaganda. They described “constant hunger” and “severe weight loss” in custody. Some also reported sexual abuse, including “invasive gynaecological examinations” and “various forms of sexual humiliation” such as forced nudity.
Much of this was known in the West, but having the U.N.’s imprimatur will make it harder for China to dismiss it as what it calls “vicious lies concocted by anti-China forces.” The report could have some impact inside China if outsiders can find a way to penetrate the country’s Great Firewall of internet censorship.
The report should force a debate in the U.N. General Assembly and Security Council. Incredibly, China still sits on the Human Rights Council, and China’s nominee
Yue Zhang
faces no contenders in next’s month’s election for a seat on the U.N.’s Human Rights Council Advisory Committee. Let’s see if the world’s Muslim nations will vote to condemn Chinese treatment of fellow Muslims, or if they’ll sell out for a Beijing-financed bridge.
In December President Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which restricts imports from Xinjiang connected with involuntary labor. The European Union is considering a similar ban, and the U.N. report is another reason for Europe to rethink its solicitous relationship with Beijing.
The U.S. can’t stop the horrors of Xinjiang, but it can learn from what those horrors say about the nature of this Chinese government. One lesson is to prevent this nightmare from spreading elsewhere—such as Taiwan.
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the September 2, 2022, print edition.
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