UNITED NATIONS: A new report from the United nationb has shown that the Chinese government might have "committed crimes against humanity" in the Xinjiang territory, home to the ethnic Uyghur Muslims.
The report, which the UN's Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights ordered and released on Wednesday, said that prisoners had been exposed to "patterns of ill-treatment" that included "incidents of sexual and gender-based abuse." Others were subjected to forced medical care, the report adds, and "selective enforcement of family planning and birth control rules," the BBC reported.
In spite of China's repeated denials, investigators were quoted in the report as saying that they uncovered "credible evidence" of torture possibly amounting to "crimes against humanity". They said that China had created "systems of arbitrary imprisonment" and exploited nebulous national security legislation to restrict minorities' rights.
According to the UN assessment, China should take immediate action to free "all persons arbitrarily deprived of their liberty," and certain of Beijing's acts may constitute "commission of international crimes, including crimes against humanity." According to the BBC, China responded by dismissing the charges of torture once more and arguing that the camps are a tool to combat terrorism after being made aware of the article in advance.
Its mission to the UN human rights council in Geneva rejected the report's conclusions because they "smeared and slandered China" and meddled in the nation's domestic affairs, according to the delegation.
The delegation issued a lengthy statement in which it claimed that the so-called "evaluation" "is a politicised document that ignores the facts and plainly exposes the objective of the US, Western countries, and anti-China forces to exploit human rights as a political tool."
China's largest region, Xinjiang, with a population of 25.85 million and makes up one-sixth of the country's total area. The region also offers crucial channels for access to markets in Central Asia and beyond because it shares external borders with Afghanistan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, and Tajikistan.
There are about 12 million Uyghurs, mainbly Muslim, living in Xinjiang.
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