The Office also requested information and engaged in dialogue and technical exchanges with China throughout the process.
Beijing: China on Thursday slammed the UN human rights office over a report that found Beijingโs crackdown on ethnic minorities in Xinjiang and called the finding a โfarceโ.
Hours after the release of much awaited UN report which stated that China has committed โserious human rights violationsโ against the Uyghur, Liu Yuyin, spokesperson for the Chinese mission to Geneva, called the โso-called โassessmentโ on Xinjiangโ a โfarceโ and a politically motivated attempt to smear China. โThe so-called โassessmentโ is purely a farce plotted by some Western countries and anti-China forces. They have been consistently pressing the High Commissioner and the OHCHR, Cand demanding the release of a so-called โassessmentโ on Xinjiang, so as to bring ammunitions to their political manipulation of Xinjiang-related issues. It is completely a politicized document that disregards facts, and reveals explicitly the attempt of some Western countries and anti-China forces to use human rights as a political tool,โ Liu said in a statement released by the mission.
The report was published just minutes before the end of U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bacheletโs four-year term and after months of unexplained delays.
The report also stated that China has committed to โother predominantly Muslim communitiesโ in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
OHCHR comes in the wake of the visit by Bachelet in May, who said that โallegations 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.โ
Published on Bacheletโs final day of her four-year term in office, the report said that the violations have taken place in the context of the Chinese Governmentโs assertion that it is targeting terrorists among the Uyghur minority with a counter-extremism strategy that involves the use of so-called Vocational Educational and Training Centres (VETCs), or re-education camps.
In a strongly-worded assessment at the end of the report, OHCHR said that the extent of
arbitrary detentions against Uyghur and others, in the context of โrestrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights, enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.โ
The assessment was initiated following serious allegations of human rights violations against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim communities brought to the attention of the UN Human Rights Office and UN human rights mechanisms in late 2017, particularly in the context of the Chinese Governmentโs policies and measures to combat terrorism and โextremismโ.
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The OHCHR said that the government policy in recent years in Xinjiang has โled to interlocking patterns of severe and undue restrictions on a wide range of human rights.โ Even if the VETC system has as China says, โbeen reduced in scope or wound upโ, said OHCHR, โthe laws and policies that underpin it remain in placeโ, leading to increased use of imprisonment.
The systems of arbitrary detention and related patterns of abuse since 2017, said OHCHR, โcome against the backdrop of broader discriminationโ against Uyghur and other minorities.
โThis has included far-reaching, arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions on human rights and fundamental freedoms, in violation of international laws and standardsโ, including restrictions on religious freedom and the rights to privacy and movement.
The assessment is based on a rigorous review of documentary material currently available to the Office, with its credibility assessed in accordance with standard human rights methodology.
Particular attention was paid to the governmentโs laws, policies, data and statements. The Office also requested information and engaged in dialogue and technical exchanges with China throughout the process.
The information was assessed against applicable international human rights law and builds on the work of a number of UN human rights mechanisms.
It is pertinent to mention that the UNโs assessment comes at the time when Chinese President Xi Jinping is poised to break with tradition by taking on a third term.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by HW News staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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