Diplomats made the statements at the current UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva.
The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council called on China on Tuesday to implement recommendations made by the U.N.’s human rights office in a two-year-old report issued and to release Uyghurs and others unjustly detained in Xinjiang.
American diplomat Michèle Taylor also demanded that China clarify the fate and whereabouts of missing family members and facilitate safe contact and reunion during a speech at the current Human Rights Council session in Geneva, which runs from Sept. 9 to Oct. 11.
Taylor read the joint statement on behalf of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States – all members of the Core Group on Xinjiang.
In September 2022, the U.S. and Norway cosponsored a proposal that the Human Rights Council hold a debate on the situation of human rights in Xinjiang, home to roughly 12 million Uyghurs, as a follow-up to a report issued that August by the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights, or OHCHR.
The 46-page report by then-U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said “serious human rights violations” had been committed in Xinjiang in the context of the Chinese government’s application of counter-terrorism and counter-extremism strategies, and that repression of the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities there “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
But China and its allies on the 47-member Council defeated the proposal in a 19-17 vote, with 11 abstentions.
“Over the past two years, China has had many opportunities to meaningfully address these well-founded concerns,” Taylor said.
“We regret that China has denied the impartial and objective findings and rejected the recommendations of the OHCHR’s assessment,” she said.
