China in tight spot after UN report confirms human rights violations in Xianjiang

Beijing is facing a difficult situation after the UN Special Rapporteur stated that China is involved in the suppression of the minority Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang.

Human Rights activists have raised concern over the plight of Uyghur Muslims and the support for the cause has found expression time and again through calls to boycott Chinese products that are manufactured using forced labour in Xinjiang.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also came up with several reports with first-person accounts of affected minorities, which showed Beijing's active involvement in the crime against humanity. There have been global demands to boycott Chinese products as well as to announce a diplomatic boycott of events held by China, the Geneva Daily reported.

The recent UN report brought an end to the duel over the claims that Beijing is involved in the suppression of the minority Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang. The report found it "reasonable to conclude" that forced labour has been taking place in China's Xinjiang province.

The report found that Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic groups have been subjected to repressive and abusive practices as part of Chinese state-mandated forced labour systems.

"New U.N. Special Rapporteur's Report on Contemporary Forms of Slavery concludes that forced labour is taking place in Xinjiang," Adrian Zenz, a China researcher tweeted, along with a copy of the report.

The Special Rapporteur, Tomoya Obokata, further found that "the nature and extent of powers exercised" meant that "some instances may amount to enslavement as a crime against humanity."

UN human rights experts have raised serious concerns about the alleged detention and forced labour of Muslim Uyghurs in China, calling for unhindered access to the country to conduct fact-finding missions and urging global and domestic companies to closely scrutinize their supply chains.

Earlier this year, UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons expressed serious concerns about the lack of oversight and enforcement to ensure protection against trafficking for forced labour in Xinjiang. However, the latest report has validated the charges of gross human rights violations in China, reported the Geneva Daily.

The report said China carried out detention of minorities and compelled them to work in what Beijing called the vocational skills education and training centre system. While China claims it creates employment opportunities, the Special Rapporteur's findings showed these jobs are "low-skilled and low-paid employment."

Further, the affected minority workers are subjected to conditions that "may amount to enslavement as a crime against humanity." These include excessive surveillance, abusive living and working conditions, restriction of movement through internment, threats, physical and/or sexual violence and other inhuman or degrading treatment.

In view of the "atrocities in Xinjiang", some western countries including the US, UK, Canada, Japan, and Australia had diplomatically boycotted the Beijing Olympics. Not only this, the US had stopped buying products from Xinjiang as a mark of protest against the suppression of minorities.

While the US stopped buying cotton from China, many other countries mulled the option but remained in a quandary as Beijing kept denying the charges of forced labour. Xinjiang is a large supplier of cotton and solar panels.

China has so far refuted the allegations of atrocities and crimes against humanity. But it did not ever allow international news media to freely cover the issue and to speak to affected minorities. Meanwhile, China has sponsored visits of envoys from different countries to Xinjiang to tell the world all is well with minorities.

(ANI)

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