Human Rights Watch criticizes China for continued atrocities in Xinjiang

International human rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a recent 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.

The HRW statement comes on the second anniversary of the release of the UN Human Rights Office’s damning report on Xinjiang in August 2022.

Commenting on the situation, Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch, said, “Beijing’s blatant 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.”

Furthermore, the HRW statement claims that for the past two years, the Chinese government has rejected all calls to end its severe repression in Xinjiang, including mass arbitrary detentions, torture, enforced disappearances, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, separation of families, forced labor, sexual violence, and violations of reproductive rights.

Thousands of Muslim minorities are being wrongly imprisoned in Xinjiang, where their relatives living 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.

Some families do not even know if their detained relatives are still alive. And those who have been released are still subject to strict police surveillance and further restrictions on their rights, the HRW statement claimed.

Additionally, on August 27, 2024, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk acknowledged that in Xinjiang “a number of problematic laws and policies are still in place,” and reported that his/her office continues to press Chinese authorities to release those arbitrarily detained and to clarify the status and whereabouts of missing persons.

Turk also said his/her office would “continue to advocate for the implementation” of its recommendations, even though the Chinese delegation continues to reject all recommendations of the 2022 Xinjiang report.

Additionally, Chinese officials have dismissed the report as “illegal and meaningless” in the context of the UN Universal Periodic Review of China’s human rights record in July.

he/she said, “The UN Human Rights Commissioner has acknowledged that many of the ‘problematic laws and policies’ responsible for abuses against Uighurs are still in place. Two years after a UN Human Rights Office report concluded that abuses in Xinjiang ‘may amount to crimes against humanity,’ the office needs to issue an update on the current situation in Xinjiang and present a concrete action plan to hold those responsible accountable.”