Beijing: The Human Rights Council of the United Nations should hold a special meeting to discuss last week's shocking report that suggested China may have committed "crimes against humanity" in the western region of Xinjiang.
According to a group of UN-appointed experts, the world cannot "turn a blind eye" to the "systematic human rights violations" in the area and has called for the appointment of a special envoy to monitor rights conditions in China.
In a statement released on Wednesday, 45 independent UN-appointed experts urged UN Member States, UN agencies, and business enterprises to demand that China uphold its human rights obligations, including during their ongoing discussions with the government.
The signatories were primarily rapporteurs with backgrounds in involuntary disappearances, human rights, counterterrorism, torture, human trafficking, modern slavery, and religious freedom.
Fionnuala N'Aoláin, a UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, organised the statement.
Rapporteurs are impartial individuals appointed to look into particular human rights concerns in particular areas and offer recommendations.
In Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, they claimed that China's policies had limited Uygurs' rights in a number of areas, including religious freedom, sexuality, freedom of assembly and expression, forced labour, and "freedom from any violation of the right to life and from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, and from enforced disappearance."
The report, which was released in the waning moments of Michelle Bachelet's final day in the position of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, accused Beijing of some actions that led to "serious human rights violations" in Xinjiang and urged Beijing to change its course.
It found evidence of torture in detention facilities that the Chinese government refers to as vocational training facilities, connected Beijing's employment policies to forced labour, and identified "unusual" and "coercive" government actions that contributed to a sharp decline in the birth rate in Xinjiang.
The Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights also made public a lengthy response from China's UN mission, which denied all allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang and claimed the report was based on "lies and disinformation fabricated by anti-China forces," undermining the credibility of the office.
The experts praised the OHCHR's UN report, which N Aoláin described as a "principled and comprehensive assessment" of the situation in Xinjiang.
It builds on the hard work that several special procedure mechanisms, including the working group on business and human rights, the special rapporteur on minorities, and my own mandate, the counterterrorism human rights mandate, have been doing for a number of years, she said. "We believe it strengthens and validates what the entire UN system has been saying for years," the statement reads.
N Aoláin noted that despite Beijing's objections, the report "demanded" a special session of the Human Rights Council.
"The Human Rights Council was conceived of and established to address international concerns regarding human rights.
No nation is exempt from this. I'll mention that there was a special session on the United States following the George Floyd incident, for instance," she said.
N Aoláin continued, "We have special sessions on Ukraine, and we've had special sessions on Afghanistan. The council's role is to "act where there is a convergence of concerns about violations of human rights in a country."
In response to a question about whether she was concerned that China might obstruct efforts to discuss the findings at the UN level, she stated: "At the end of the day, I think it's really difficult for any country, no matter how powerful, when the evidence keeps coming out, when the work is done, to make these things go away. They won't go away on their own.
N Aoláin, an Irish academic, was singled out by Liu Yuyin, a Chinese representative in Geneva, for "echoing the Xinjiang-related lies and misinformation fabricated by the US and some other Western countries and anti-China forces."
The world has clearly seen Ms. Aoláin's and a few other experts' political motivations, and their anti-China show needs to come to an end, Liu said.
Two-thirds of the 26 former detainees who were interrogated by the OHCHR at government facilities had been "subjected to treatment that would constitute torture and/or other forms of ill-treatment."
According to the report, "the extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uygur and other largely Muslim groups pursuant to law and policy, in context of restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity."
The interviews "appeared to point to a pattern that these are not isolated acts of torture but rather deliberate and state sanctioned violence and intimidation, especially during interrogations and the reference by multiple interviewees to the use of the 'tiger chair,'" according to Alice Edwards, the UN's Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
She stated that China "must thoroughly investigate the allegations of torture, inhumane treatment, and all other human rights allegations."
"No nation enjoys having its dirty laundry regarding human rights exposed in the open. But refusing to acknowledge a problem in the face of this and numerous other reports and a growing body of evidence while still pleading with people to ignore it will not help them, Edwards continued.
Although Beijing's alleged behaviour has been denounced by Western governments, no action has yet been taken in retaliation.
Dominic Porter, the head of the EU's China desk, stated in Brussels on Monday that the organisation was "working constructively with UN members to offer victims a real chance of justice." To put it another way, we're prepared to play our cards.
"Do I currently understand the strategy? No. The short answer is yes, but it's crucial to have a plan in place so that the victims of these crimes are not left without any attempt to advance the issue of accountability, Porter said.
We must be realistic about the UN's capabilities, he continued. The system isn't perfect, but we must make the best use of it possible.
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