Ravina Shamdasan, the spokesperson for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OFHCR), said on Aug. 27, 2024, that human rights concerns and “many problematic laws and policies remain in place” in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China (XUAR) and urged authorities to undertake a full review. According to reporting from Reuters, Shamdasan spoke on the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) lack of willingness to acknowledge the issue saying: “There’s a lot to be desired, which is why we need to continue to work with them, to engage, to see where we can make some progress.”

In a meeting with the U.N. Human Rights Council on July 4, 2024, China agreed to adopt 70% Western-led recommendations for human rights reforms regarding Uyghur people in Xinjiang; UNHRC President Omar Zniber said to Reuters, “Progress and development on human rights is achieved in China with each passing day.” Despite efforts from the U.N., frustrations remain in other groups with the slow progress of the global community in holding the PRC accountable for the allegations of human rights violations.

Context and History

One can look back into the past for context about the current relationship between the Uyghurs and the PRC. 

Xinjiang is in northwest China and is an ‘autonomous region,” which means it is theoretically self-governing despite severe restrictions from the PRC’s central government. According to research and reporting from the BBC, the region is also rich in oil and natural gas and has been viewed by Beijing as “an important trade route” because of its location between Europe and Central Asia. 

In a report written and fact-checked by the Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, in the 1950s, there was a large influx of Han people (ethnic Chinese) moving to Xinjiang after its establishment as an autonomous region. In the 1990s, when two-fifths of Xinjiang’s population was Han, an anti-Han sentiment rose in the region triggering violence through to the early 2000s. In 2009, the PRC government blamed Uyghurs for the death of 200 people who died in clashes in the XUAR.

The Chinese Communist Party is atheist but formally recognizes five official religions in China: Daoism, Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism. The PRC launched a crackdown on ‘extremist religious groups’ in May 2014, including Uyghurs, and increased surveillance and arrests of Uyghurs in 2017, citing a need for greater security and preventing domestic terrorism.

A 48-page report from the OHCHR was released in August 2022 detailing allegations of human rights violations the PRC perpetrated against Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim Turkic-speaking ethnic minority group. The report said that the “extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of and other predominantly Muslim groups” in Xinjiang could be considered international “crimes against humanity.”

Council on Foreign Relations Senior Writer Lindsay Maizland wrote about some of the actions taken by the Chinese government for a CFR report. “Uyghur and other minority women have reported forced sterilizations and intrauterine device insertions, and officials have threatened to detain anyone who violates birth-control orders or has too many children,” Maizland wrote. “Beijing has also pressured other governments to repatriate Uyghurs who have fled China.” 

The 89-million-member Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which dominates the Politburo, also has enforced anti-extremism laws prohibiting Muslim traditions and heavily increased surveillance of Uyghur neighborhoods. The BBC also verified its reporting that Uyghur people have been forced to work in newly built factories and cotton fields while attending re-education camps. The Xinjiang High People’s Procuratorate, China’s national agency responsible for legal and criminal prosecution, published statistics in February 2022 that the number of Uyghur people prosecuted and sentenced to prison between 2017 to 2021 in Xinjiang was 540,826.

The U.N. Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights had its 73rd committee on Feb. 16, 2023, in Geneva, Switzerland, and reviewed China’s actions toward the Uyghur population. China’s delegation was present at this conference and was asked questions about the country’s alleged abuses of Uyghur Muslims — the delegation denied the abuses were happening. United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken held a press conference to announce the release of an independent State Department 2022 International Religious Freedom Report on May 15, 2023, ahead of the OHCHR. In his remarks, Blinken said, “We’ll keep advocating for religious freedom in countries where the rights are under attack.”

Chinese government officials have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and denounced any accusations of abuse or religious targeting of Uyghurs. Chinese Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi, spoke to the U.N Refugee Agency on Feb. 22, 2021, saying, “Such inflammatory accusations are fabricated out of ignorance and prejudice. They are simply malicious and politically driven hype and couldn’t be further from the truth.” Reuters reported that Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian said on Sept. 1, 2022, that China fully protects the rights of all ethnic groups and “vigorously denied any abuses in Xinjiang,” issuing a 131-page response to the 2022 report defending China’s record.

Moving Forward, What’s Next?

The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), a research-based advocacy organization in Washington D.C. has consistently called upon the need to condemn and end the human rights violations in Xinjiang. According to UHRP, actions by sovereign nations could include passing parliamentary resolutions that place trade and economic sanctions on China until it ends abuses, refusing to extradite Uyghurs who are seeking asylum and formally condemning China’s alleged atrocities. 

UHRP Executive Director Omar Kanat said in a joint press release statement with The World Uyghur Congress on Feb. 17, 2023, “Once again, the Chinese government continues to deny and turn a blind eye to the factual evidence presented,” Kanat said. “It has been a long time since the UN responded in a more comprehensive manner.”

Kelley E. Currie, an international human rights lawyer and former U.S. State Department official, wrote in her argument in Foreign Policy Magazine that there is a comprehensive way the UNHRC can tactfully do more to protect the human rights of Uyghurs in China; specifically, the use of bodies such as the International Labour Organization to encourage economic sanctions on China, which since 2022 has been suspected of labour human rights abuses. 

Great Powers within the U.N. may be able to leverage their political currency against China and negotiate to remove any aggressive language about Uyghur people in resolutions in China-related votes. Building a coalition of allies in the Global South by giving some incentives to developing nations from the West may pressure those nations to vote against any China resolution that would advance the agenda of harming Uyghur people.

The Liberal International Order is an open and rule-based system where a web of international institutions creates shared expectations of cooperative relations among states, and sovereign nations have high and reasonable expectations of non-interference in domestic policies. The CCP may be allowed to argue that because of an absence of central authority above the governments of sovereign states, they are not obligated to change their policies and will continue to deny allegations. 

However, Human Rights Watch (HRW), an advocacy non-governmental organization headquartered in New York, had its call to action on how to force the hand of the PRC to stop their human rights violations and to diplomatically work within the international system to do so.

In their press release, the HRW wrote, “Governments hosting Uyghurs who have fled China should facilitate family reunification by allowing family members of Turkic Muslims to join them,” and “More governments need to impose visa bans, travel bans and targeted individual sanctions on abusive Xinjiang officials under their human rights sanctions regimes” to prevent the furthering of China’s harmful agenda for the minority group.