Foreign Relations & International Law

New UN Report Details 'Credible' Reports of Torture, Forced Sterilization, Internment in Xinjiang

Tia Sewell
Thursday, September 1, 2022, 10:46 AM

The report finds that Beijing's crackdown on ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang autonomous region may constitute crimes against humanity.

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Minutes before her term came to an end, outgoing U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet published a 46-page report alleging that Beijing's crackdown on ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang autonomous region "may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity."

Based on descriptions of detention gathered from 2017-2019, the assessment states that internment camps in Xinjiang have been "marked by patterns of torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, other violations of the right of persons deprived of their liberty to be treated humanely and with dignity, as well as violations of the right to health."

"Allegations of patterns of torture or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence," the report concludes.

You can read the report here or below:


Tia Sewell is a former associate editor of Lawfare. She studied international relations and economics at Stanford University and is now a master’s student in international security at Sciences Po in Paris.

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