"This is going to be a major headache for China", says expert after UN drops bombshell Xinjiang report

By Ayushi Agarwal
Washington [US], September 2 : Just minutes before her four-year term ended, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in her long-awaited report on Wednesday outlined China's crimes against humanity due to its "arbitrary and discriminatory detention" of Uyghurs and other Muslims in its Xinjiang region.
Adrian Zenz, in an interview with ANI, termed this bombshell report as 'overall positive, very conservative and cautious in its approach'. Zenz is a Senior Fellow and Director in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Washington, DC.
"My assessment of the report is overall positive, it's useful but of course, it's not perfect at all and there are some shortcomings in it. The report is very conservative and cautious in its approach," Zenz said.
He went on to say, "It explains this methodology and it uses some very important internal leaks or hacked government documents, including especially the Xinjiang police files, which were obtained from within Xinjiang police computers and the evidence from these files. The report's strongest aspect by far the internment camps."
Zenz further cited the estimates from the report and said that a very substantial number of Uyghurs and others may have been detained between 2017 and 2019.
Calling the report weaker when it comes to the issues of forced labour, Zenz believes that there are some shortcomings in regards to both prevention and sterilization, though it cites a couple of official government statistics, it's very low on policy analysis.
"It is my understanding that this UN entity is not authorized to make a formal determination of either crime against humanity or genocide. So 'may have been committed' is probably the best language that they were able to come up with," Zenz said.
Zens said that it is interesting to see that the report did not engage with the term genocide and of course, that is linked to its rather weak presentation on, both prevention and sterilization. "I personally think that the report failed to explore this sufficiently. There could have been better work done on the topic because I think the significant evidence that the risk of a slow long term genocide is occurring as we speak and is unfolding, and is being planned through population optimization and the systematic reduction in the birth rate of the Uighurs", said Zenz.
Zenz termed the report as a "highly independent piece of research", the expert believes that it is going to be a big headache for China.
"The UN report is going to be very useful going forward, it's going to be seen as a highly independent piece of research. It's a confirmation of a lot of the evidence that we have been gathering and have been publishing, and it's a uniquely authoritative and neutral sort of resource to use for governments and activists and others. All set to challenge Beijing."
"So I think actually in many ways, this report is going to be a major headache. A major problem for Beijing going forward", he added.
On Wednesday, the UN Human Rights Office said in its report that "serious human rights violations have been committed" in Xinjiang in the context of the government's application of "counter-terrorism and counter-extremism strategies".
"There are credible indications of violations of reproductive rights through the coercive enforcement of family planning policies since 2017," the office said.
It added that a lack of government data "makes it difficult to draw conclusions on the full extent of current enforcement of these policies and associated violations of reproductive rights."
"There are credible indications of violations of reproductive rights through the coercive enforcement of family planning policies since 2017," the office said.
It further added that a lack of government data "makes it difficult to draw conclusions on the full extent of current enforcement of these policies and associated violations of reproductive rights."
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that the report authoritatively described China's "appalling treatment" of ethnic and religious minority groups.