Comment: UN report on abuse of Uyghurs misses a vital word: genocide Published on: 7 September 2022 Writing for The Conversation, Dr Jo Smith Finley discusses how the UN report on human rights abuses against the Uyghurs is stronger than expected, but there is a glaring omission. , The long-awaited UN report into human rights abuses committed in Chinaâs Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) was finally to a mixed reception. For some â principally the Chinese government â it went too far. Others thought it didnât go far enough. Many hadnât expected the examination of abuses against Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minority peoples, authored UN high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet, to see the light of day. And Beijing had made strenuous efforts to the report, and influence its content. But on August 31, ten minutes before Bacheletâs tenure as high commissioner was due to expire, the finally went online. It is surprisingly strong in some aspects but decidedly weak in others. Iâve been researching Uyghur communities and Uyghur-Han relations in Xinjiang for more than three decades, including many field trips. I submitted to the , an independent peopleâs tribunal set up by former war crimes prosecutor Sir Geoffrey Nice QC at the behest of the World Uyghur Congress. Its published on December 9 2021 found that genocide, crimes against humanity and torture are being perpetrated against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. What the report does well Reading the UNâs report, there much that is strong. It gives voice to victims, as reaffirmed by camp survivor Zumret Dawut, who while reading it: âI felt there was justice, that there are people who care in this world.â It finds that legal pronouncements from the Chinese government (PRC) âconflate what might otherwise be construed as matters of personal choice in relation to religious practice with âextremismâ, and âextremismâ with the phenomenon of terrorismâ. This, the report says, has the effect of âsignificantly broadening the range of conduct that can be targeted under a counter-terrorism objective or pretextâ. This echoes the of on the . The report also confirms large-scale arbitrary and discriminatory âdeprivation of libertyâ of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities in so-called VETC (vocational education and training centres), at least between 2017 and 2019. It concludes that this âmay constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanityâ. That use of âmayâ was read with incredulity by some. , chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, : âThis is genocide, these are crimes against humanity ⌠itâs not âmaybeâ, this is something that is already happening.â What the report doesnât say Thereâs also a glaring omission. The UN report makes no attempt to measure genocide allegations made against Beijing against the criteria laid out in the , despite several , , and on the . This sits in stark contrast to the , which found beyond a reasonable doubt that the PRC had committed genocide on the grounds of the UN convention article 2(d): imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. There are a number of reasons why this might be so. One reason is that, according to news website Politico, the OHCHR team was still rewriting the report to accommodate Beijing on August 31. Politico cites an unnamed diplomat as stating that the section on forced sterilisation was during the final hours to avoid giving rise to claims of genocide. Yet there is a growing scholarly that genocide is in this case. The UN report, while not framing those crimes in the context of the UN convention, finds credible evidence for acts that meet the criteria. These include the arrest and imprisonment of prominent , which it said has had a âbroader deleterious effect on the life of their communityâ. This contravenes article 2(c): âdeliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in partâ. The report presents evidence of and . This contravenes article 2(b): âcausing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the groupâ. There was also evidence of the , corresponding to article 2(c). There has also been a sharp in Uyghur-majority areas. The same decline has not been observed in areas where there is a majority Han Chinese population. This is a clear contravention of article 2(d): âimposing measures intended to prevent births within the groupâ. No reference is made to Chinese state and academic documents that elaborate its policy of ââ and the way it is carried out via forced sterilisation and birth prevention in Xinjiang. And nor does the issue of forcibly appear in the report (beyond one brief sentence). This is a clear breach of article 2(e): âforcibly transferring children of the group to another groupâ. One last area of weakness concerns , where the report finds only âindicationsâ that labour and employment schemes âappear to be discriminatoryâ and to âinvolve elements of coercionâ. Turning point? The UN report is nonetheless a significant turning point. It paves the way for, as World Uyghur Congress president Dolkun Isa put it, â by member states, UN bodies, and the business community ⌠Accountability starts now.â Unfortunately, most of the reportâs recommendations are directed to the Chinese government, which has , at least on the international stage. Beijing has asserted that the UNâs ââ are based on a âpatchwork of disinformationâ and prove that the OHCHR has become âthe of the US and some western forces against developing countriesâ. There are precedents for independent international mechanisms to report on human rights, including UN commissions of enquiry, fact-finding and monitoring missions, and evidence-gathering bodies in case of future prosecutions. But, relying on the UN itself for action, given Beijingâs and at the UN Human Rights Council, may prove insufficient. An alternative route is provided by the , as by the Uyghur Tribunal, which stated: âIt is unfortunate that no efforts have been made by those [countries who declared China to be perpetrating genocide in Xinjiang] or other countries to have the issue dealt with at the ICJ, as might happen if a country had the courage to take the matter there.â A second route would be for the to open an investigation into PRC actions in Xinjiang in response to three by UK barrister Rodney Dixon QC. Whichever route is taken, Nury Turkel is right when he says the position of the international community is now â and that the report must translate into "real actionâ. , Reader in Chinese Studies, This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the . 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