United Nations, Sep 1 : A new UN report has revealed that the Chinese government could have “committed crimes against humanity” in the Xinjiang region where the ethnic Uyghur Muslims.The report was released on Wednesday.
report, which was requested by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights it stated that prisoners were subjected to “patterns of ill-treatment” which included “incidents of sexual and gender-based violence”.
Others, the report stated were subjected to forced medical treatments as well as “discriminatory application of contraceptive and family planning policies” The BBC said.
Despite repeated claims by China investigators were quoted in the report as saying they discovered “credible evidence” of torture possibly amounting to “crimes against humanity”.
They were accused by China of using ambiguous legislation on national security to crack on the rights of minorities and creating “systems of arbitrary detention”.
The UN report recommended that China immediately implements actions to release “all people arbitrarily deprived of their freedom” and recommended that some of Beijing’s actions could be a “commission of international crimes, including crimes against humanity”.
In response, China, which was aware of the report in advance, rebuffed the claims of abuse and claimed that the camps are used to combat terrorism, according to the BBC.
The delegation of China to the UN human rights council in Geneva rejected the conclusions of the report which said it “smeared and denigrated China” and overstepped in China’s internal affairs.
“This assessment is a document that has been manipulated to make it seem like it does not reflect the facts and fully exposes the motives of the US, Western countries and anti-China forces to make use of the human rights issue as a tool for political purposes,” the delegation said in an extensive statement.
Xinjiang is the largest region in China with a total area of one-sixth of the total area, with the total population of 25.85 million.
Since it shares boundaries with Afghanistan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia and Tajikistan The region also offers important ways of getting to Central Asian markets and beyond.
There are around 12 million Uyghurs mostly Muslim who live in Xinjiang.
