Australia's federal opposition has called on the government to sanction Chinese government figures after a United Nations report found discriminatory detention of Uyghurs and other Muslim groups in China's Xinjiang region may constitute crimes against humanity.
The long-awaited report from the UN's human rights office calls for an urgent international response over allegations of torture and other rights violations in what Beijing says is a campaign to root out terrorism.
UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet brushed aside China's calls for the office to withhold the report, which followed her own trip to Xinjiang in May and which Beijing said was part of a Western campaign to smear China's reputation.
In the wake of the report, Shadow Foreign Minister Simon Birmingham said the government should consider imposing Magnitsky sanctions on Chinese government figures responsible for human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
"Given the bipartisan legislation of Australia's Magnitsky sanctions this year, now followed by this concerning report, it is appropriate for the Albanese government to consider targeted sanctions in response to human rights abuses in Xinjiang," he said.
"The Coalition would give bipartisan support to any appropriately targeted sanctions, including any reflective of sanctions already applied by the European Union, Canada, US or UK."
In a statement, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the Australian government was "deeply concerned about the findings", but did not mention sanctions.
"[The UN report] concludes that serious human rights violations have been committed in Xinjiang," she said.
"It states that allegations of torture or ill-treatment are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence and that some of the violations may constitute crimes against humanity."
She said Australia had consistently condemned human rights violations against the Uyghurs and other ethnic and Muslim minorities in China, and called on the Chinese government "to address the concerns raised in this report".
"Our thoughts are also with the Australian Uyghur community, Senator Wong said.
"We acknowledge the strength and determination they have shown in speaking out, in support of their loved ones."
What did the report find?
The report was not expected to break significant new ground beyond findings from independent advocacy groups and journalists who have documented concerns about human rights in Xinjiang for years.
But it comes with the imprimatur of the United Nations and the countries — notably including rising powerhouse China itself — that make it up.
It largely corroborates earlier reporting by advocacy groups and others, and injects UN heft behind the outrage that victims and their families have expressed for years.
China shot back, saying the UN rights office ignored human rights "achievements" made together by "people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang".
"Based on the disinformation and lies fabricated by anti-China forces and out of presumption of guilt, the so-called 'assessment' distorts China's laws, wantonly smears and slanders China, and interferes in China's internal affairs," read a letter from China's diplomatic mission in Geneva issued in response to the UN report.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin lashed out at the "so-called assessment", saying it was "orchestrated and produced by the US and some Western forces and is completely illegal or void".
"It is a patchwork of false information that serves as political tool for the US and other Western countries to strategically use Xinjiang to contain China," he said.
"The United Nations Human Rights Office made up the assessment based on the political scheme of some foreign anti-China forces."
China has also released a 122-page report titled Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism in Xinjiang: Truth and Facts that defended its record and was distributed by the UN with its assessment.
The 48-page report says "serious human rights violations" have been committed in Xinjiang under China's policies to fight terrorism and extremism, which singled out Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim communities, between 2017 and 2019.
The report cites "patterns of torture" inside what Beijing called vocational centres, which were part of its reputed plan to boost economic development in the region, and it points to "credible" allegations of torture or ill-treatment, including cases of sexual violence.
Above all, perhaps, the report warns that the "arbitrary and discriminatory detention" of such groups in Xinjiang, through moves that stripped them of "fundamental rights … may constitute international crimes, in particular, crimes against humanity".
The report was drawn in part from interviews with former detainees and others in the know about conditions at eight separate detention centres in the region.
Its authors suggest China was not always forthcoming with information, saying requests for some specific sets of information "did not receive formal response".
In the past five years, the Chinese government's mass detention campaign in Xinjiang swept an estimated 1 million Uyghurs and other ethnic groups into a network of prisons and camps, which Beijing called "training" facilities but former detainees described as brutal detention centres.
Beijing has since closed many of the camps, but hundreds of thousands continue to languish in prison on vague, secret charges.
The rights office said it could not confirm estimates of how many people were detained in the internment camps in Xinjiang, but added it was "reasonable to conclude that a pattern of large-scale arbitrary detention occurred" at least between 2017 and 2019.
Human rights chief releases report on final day in the role
The run-up to the report's release fuelled a debate over China’s influence at the world body and epitomised the on-and-off diplomatic chill between Beijing and the West over human rights, among other sore spots.
The report, which Western diplomats and UN officials said had been all but ready for months, was published with just minutes to go in Ms Bachelet's four-year term.
Ms Bachelet confirmed in June that she would not seek a new term as rights chief, and promised the report would be released by her departure on August 31.
She said in recent months that she received pressure from both sides to publish or not publish the report, and hinted last week her office might miss the deadline, saying it was "trying" to release it before her exit.
The 70-year-old plans to return to Chile to retire.
Many candidates have applied to replace her in the role but no successor has yet been named by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, whose choice must then be approved by the General Assembly in New York.
But Human Rights Watch's Kenneth Roth told Reuters that the last-minute drop of the report was not the correct move.
"Frankly, to issue the report as she's walking out the door minimizes the report," he said.
"By issuing and running she is giving up, she's not doing anything with it, (she is) just kind of dropping it into the bin and leaving the office."
ABC/wires
