UNHRC rejects Western bid to debate Xinjiang abuses
In a close diplomatic victory for China, the UN’s top human rights body voted down a proposal from Britain, Turkey, the United States and other mostly Western countries to hold a debate on alleged rights abuses against Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China’s western Xinjiang region, according to The Associated Press.
At the 47-member state Human Rights Council, 17 countries voted in favor, 19 were against, and 11 abstained in a vote to hold a debate on Xinjiang at its next session in March.
The vote amounted to a test of political and diplomatic clout between the West and Beijing, and would have marked the first time that China’s record on human rights would merit a specific agenda item at the council.
The result, prompting a smattering of applause in the chamber, followed days of diplomatic arm-twisting in Geneva and in many national capitals as leading Western countries tried to build momentum on a report from former UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet’s office, released Aug. 31, which found that possible “crimes against humanity” had occurred in Xinjiang.
A simple majority of voting countries was required.
China locked down “no” votes among its usual allies, plus many African countries and Gulf states Qatar and the UAE.
Somalia was the only African country, and only member state of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, to vote “yes.”
Turkey is in the OIC, but doesn’t have a council seat right now.
Argentina, Brazil, India, Malaysia, Mexico and Ukraine were among countries that abstained.
“This is a missed opportunity by council members to hold China to the same standard as other countries,” Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, said in a statement.
“The international community cannot fail the victims of the Uyghur genocide.”
The UN rights office’s report stopped short of referring to abuses against Uyghurs as genocide, but some Western countries have.
The make-up of the council rotates among UN member states each year, and China — a powerful country with a permanent seat on the Security Council — has never been the subject of a country-specific resolution at the council since it was founded more than 16 years ago.
The proposal was for just to hold a debate, with no consistent monitoring of the rights situation, and amounted just about the least intrusive form of scrutiny that the council could seek.
The call stopped short of creating a team of investigators to look into possible crimes in Xinjiang, or appointing a special rapporteur — a tacit acknowledgement by the Western countries that going after increasingly influential China would be a tall order.
Before the vote, Chinese ambassador Chen Xu said Beijing “firmly opposes and categorically rejects” the proposal.
He accused Western countries of seeking to turn a “blind eye” to their own issues on human rights and point a finger at others. He insisted that China never gave its support to Bachelet’s report, and warned of a bad precedent.
Michele Taylor, the US ambassador, said the request for the debate aimed simply to “provide neutral forum for discussion.”
“No country represented here today has a perfect human rights record,” she said.
“No country, no matter how powerful, should be excluded from council discussions. This includes my country — the United States — and it includes the People’s Republic of China.”
Human rights groups have accused China of sweeping a million or more people from the minority groups into detention camps where many have said they were tortured, sexually assaulted, and forced to abandon their language and religion.
The camps were part of what the rights groups have called a ruthless campaign against extremism in Xinjiang that included draconian birth control policies and restrictions on people’s movement.
Some leading human rights advocacy groups expressed disappointment, but vowed to keep working for victims of abuses against Uyghurs and others in Xinjiang.
“Today’s vote protects the perpetrators of human rights violations rather than the victims — a dismaying result that puts the UN’s main human rights body in the farcical position of ignoring the findings of the UN’s own human rights office,” said Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnes Callamard.
“Thirty member states’ silence— or worse, blocking of debate — in the face of the atrocities committed by the Chinese government further sullies the reputation of the Human Rights Council,” she added.
On Friday, as part of dozens of proposals before the council, member states are also to consider a proposal from 26 European Union countries to appoint a “special rapporteur” on Russia, citing a string of concerns about mass arrests and detentions; harassment of journalists, opposition politicians, activists and rights defenders; and crackdowns — at times violent — on protesters against President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.