UK wants UN investigators to be given urgent access to Uyghur camps in China's Xinjiang

The UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab wants the United Nations investigators to be given urgent access to Uyghur camps in Xinjiang as he warned that human right abuses in the Chinese province are taking place on an “industrial level”. According to Financial Times, Raab will be addressing the UN human rights council to urge fellow members to address rights violations in China, Myanmar, Belarus and Russia. The UK minister will be emphasising initiating an independent investigation by the UN high commissioner for human rights into forced labour camps run by Beijing. 

During the human rights council, Raab will say that the situation in Xinjiang is beyond the pale. According to Financial Times, the UK foreign secretary is set to say that the reported abuses, which include torture, forced labour and forced sterilisation of women, are extreme and are extensive. “They are taking place on an industrial scale”. 

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It is worth noting that Raab has come under sustained pressure from rebel Conservative MPs to go further in his criticism of Beijing. The United Kingdom has already taken an increasingly robust stance against Beijing over the past year following the imposition of national security law in Hong Kong, and mounting evidence that the treatment of Uyghur Muslims amounts to genocide. As per reports, so far more than one million Uyghurs have been detained, and many sent to factories where they are forced to work in electronics textile and automotive supply chains. 

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China's systematic crackdown on Uyghurs

China's Xinjiang is home to around 10 million Uyghurs. These Turkic Muslims, which consist of 45% of Xinjiang's population, have long accused China's authorities of cultural, religious and economic discrimination. About 7% of the Muslim population in Xinjiang has been imprisoned in an expanding network of "political re-education" (detention) camps, according to US officials and UN experts.

Classified documents known as the China Cables revealed how the Chinese government uses technology to control Uyghur Muslims worldwide. However, China has repeatedly denied these reports stating that the camps in Xinjiang provide vocational training. People in the camps have described being subjected to forced political indoctrination, torture, beatings, and denial of food and medicine, and say they have been prohibited from practising their religion or speaking their language. As Beijing denies these accounts, it also refuses to allow independent inspections into these regions, which further fuels reports related to China's atrocities on the minority Muslims.

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