The US State Department expressed dismay on Friday on the second anniversary of a UN report on human rights in Xinjiang and called on China to take action and end the current repression of Muslim Uighurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups.
A 2022 report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded that “serious human rights violations” have been committed in the Xinjiang region.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller shared a post on X, saying, “Two years after the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights released an assessment on human rights violations in Xinjiang, the United States urges the PRC (People’s Republic of China) to take urgent action and end the ongoing repression of Muslim Uighurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups.”
In 2022, following a multi-year assessment, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) concluded that “serious human rights violations have been committed” in Xinjiang, the US State Department said in a press release.
The release further said that the United States is disappointed that two years later, the PRC continues to reject the findings of the OHCHR’s assessment and refuses to implement the High Commissioner’s recommendations, including to release all persons arbitrarily deprived of their liberty, prevent all threats and reprisals against Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang and abroad, and investigate allegations of human rights abuses, including torture, sexual violence, forced labour, and forced medical treatment.
The United States is gravely concerned by the PRC’s ongoing repression of predominantly Muslim Uighurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang, which the High Commissioner’s assessment found “may constitute international crimes, particularly crimes against humanity.” We again urge the PRC to take urgent action to stop these ongoing atrocities, the release said.
Meanwhile, a day earlier, international human rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a statement criticised the Chinese government for human rights abuses in Xinjiang and claimed that authorities are continuously committing human rights abuses against Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang.
Commenting on the situation, Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch, said, “Beijing’s brazen refusal to meaningfully address its well-documented crimes in Xinjiang is no surprise, but it does demonstrate the need for strong follow-up action by the UN human rights chief and UN member states. Contrary to the Chinese government’s claims, its punitive campaign against millions of Uighurs in Xinjiang is causing great pain.”
Thousands of Muslim minorities are being wrongly imprisoned in Xinjiang, where their relatives at home and abroad have little or no contact with their families in China. Many are living with uncertainty about whether their loved ones, sometimes dozens of their family members and relatives, are detained, imprisoned or forcibly disappeared.
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