On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 1:30:31 PM UTC, David P. wrote:
> U.N. Report Says China May Have Committed Crimes Against Humanity in Xinjiang
> By Chun Han Wong and James T. Areddy, Sept. 1, 2022, WSJ
>
> Human-rights groups applauded the report’s release, expressing hope it will generate a strong response from U.N. member states and international corporations.
>
> “The High Commissioner’s damning findings explain why the Chinese government fought tooth and nail to prevent the publication of her Xinjiang report, which lays bare China’s sweeping rights abuses,” Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
>
> “This is a game-changer for the international response to the Uyghur crisis,” Uyghur Human Rights Project Executive Director Omer Kanat said in a statement.
>
> Among those held in Xinjiang is Uyghur intellectual Ilham Tohti who in 2014 was jailed for life on charges of separatism; on Wednesday, his U.S.-based daughter Jewher Ilham said she welcomed the U.N. report but that it brings her “little comfort” because she believes her father was jailed on charges he didn’t deserve and that she has had no contact with him for nine years.
>
> Xinjiang, a swath of desert and mountains abutting Central Asia, is home to roughly 14 million Turkic-speaking Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. Rights activists and scholars estimate that Chinese authorities in the region have funneled more than a million people through internment camps, while implementing political indoctrination, forced labor, family separations, strict birth controls and restrictions on religious practices that target Uyghur and other Muslim communities.
>
> The U.S. State Dept and lawmakers in Canada, the U.K., and France have argued that China’s actions in Xinjiang amount to a form of genocide. An independent, U.K.-based panel of lawyers, academics and activists came to the same conclusion in December following a yearlong investigation.
>
> Agricultural and industrial supply chains involving Xinjiang are under new scrutiny because the region is a major producer of cotton, tomatoes and chemicals used in high-technology applications such as solar cells. Concerns about Xinjiang were a basis for the Biden administration and some other Western governments to diplomatically boycott this year’s winter Olympics in Beijing.
>
> Beijing has denied committing rights violations in Xinjiang, calling genocide allegations “the lie of the century.” Chinese leader Xi Jinping has said that the party’s policies in Xinjiang are “completely correct,” and that they helped restore stability to a region once racked by ethnic violence and deadly attacks against symbols of Beijing’s authority. He visited the region in July.
>
> Critical findings of China from the U.N. contrast with Beijing’s growing rhetorical and financial support for the world body, which Mr. Xi has said better represents world opinion than organizations like the Group of Seven that it says are controlled by Washington.
>
> In its Wednesday report, Ms. Bachelet’s office didn’t estimate how many people were held in Xinjiang but referred to a separate 2018 U.N. agency estimate that detainees numbered in the tens of thousands to over a million. It said Beijing responded to those estimates at the time by saying that detainees, which it says are undergoing “re-education,” come and go so total figures aren’t available.
>
> Drafting of the report spanned years, during which rights watchdogs accused the U.N. rights agency of delaying its release, particularly after Ms. Bachelet said in September 2021 that her office was “finalizing” the document. The agency continued working on the report as it arranged for Ms. Bachelet to travel to the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou and Xinjiang in late May—the first China visit by a U.N. high commissioner for human rights since 2005, and a trip that drew criticism from Western officials and rights activists for allegedly playing into Beijing’s narratives on its rights record.
>
> Two weeks after her China trip, Ms. Bachelet said she wouldn’t seek a second term as high commissioner, citing personal reasons. The former Chilean president, who turns 71 in September, also pledged to release the report before her four-year term expired. The U.N. has yet to announce Ms. Bachelet’s successor.
>
> Chinese officials lobbied heavily to block the report’s release. In July, Beijing said nearly 1,000 nongovernmental organizations in China and elsewhere signed a letter saying the report would be used as “an excuse to interfere in China’s internal affairs.” Ms. Bachelet said last week that she also received a letter signed by about 40 or so countries urging her not to issue the report.
>
> “I have been under tremendous pressure, to publish or not to publish, but I will not publish or withhold publication due to any such pressure. I can assure you of that,” Ms. Bachelet told reporters. “Our work is guided by human-rights methodology and the facts on the ground, and objective legal analysis.”
>
> The assessment issued by Ms. Bachelet’s office came on the heels of a separate set of findings from a U.N. special rapporteur on contemporary slavery, who wrote a report—dated July—saying that he found it “reasonable to conclude” that forced labor was taking place in Xinjiang.
>
> The rapporteur, legal scholar Tomoya Obokata, cited an independent assessment of information that included academic research, victims’ testimonies and government accounts. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman rejected Mr. Obokata’s claims and accused him of trying to “malignly smear and denigrate China.”
>
> https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-n-human-rights-agency-issues-report-on-xinjiang-over-chinas-protest-11661986730

The statement is per the report
"The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and
other predominantly Muslim groups, pursuant to law and policy, in context of restrictions
and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights enjoyed individually and collectively,
may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity."

1. How arbitrary is arbitrary? How discriminatory is discriminatory?
These are the grey areas at present without consensus.

2. The conclusion is based on leaked document deemed reliable. But they
do not really know whether they have the fact.

3. The report is based on the deposition of a small number of people whose
names were not randomly generated. Against, their inputs are deemed reliable.
Could they really give a full picture on what have been going on in Xinjiang?