28 August 2024

The Rights Practice, along with fourteen other human rights organisations, signed a joint statement to mark the second anniversary of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)’s publication of its Assessment of Human Rights Concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China.

That landmark August 2022 report, based on Chinese government documents and on interviews with victims and survivors, substantiated abuses including torture, mass arbitrary detention, family separations, and concluded that Chinese government actions “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.” The Chinese government vigorously opposed the publication of the 2022 report. Over the past two years, including during its recent Universal Periodic Review, it has baselessly dismissed it as “completely illegal and void.”

We urge the UN High Commissioner to hold regular and substantive briefings with victims, survivors, and their representatives, and establish a mechanism to locate and free missing and wrongfully detained family members, which would also send a strong signal of support to their loved ones. We believe that updating the 2022 report’s findings and/or publishing a progress assessment on the Chinese government’s implementation of the 2022 report’s recommendations is critically important to the longer-term goal of investigations and accountability. We also call on the UN Human Rights Council to take urgent action at its upcoming 57th session that opens on September 9.

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