China In Eurasia

Outgoing UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet says China has committed “serious human rights violations” against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslim minorities in mass detention camps across its western Xinjiang Province that may be crimes against humanity.

In a long-awaited report released in the 11th hour of Bachelet’s final day on the job, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said that a year-long investigation found evidence that the mostly Muslim ethnic minority groups were subjected to mass internment, forced labor, sexual abuse, family separations, and torture. The report also accused China of using vague national-security laws to clamp down on minority rights and establish “systems of arbitrary detention.”

The 48-page damning report released on August 31 did not use the word “genocide” -- a designation used by the United States and several other Western parliaments -- but Uyghur activists and rights groups say they feel validated after years of campaigning and independent research documenting detention, abuses, and disappearances in Xinjiang.

“This is a game-changer for the international response to the Uyghur crisis,” said Uyghur Human Rights Project Executive Director Omer Kanat. “Despite the Chinese government’s strenuous denials, the UN has now officially recognized that horrific crimes are occurring.”

Beijing has routinely rejected any assertions of detentions and abuses in Xinjiang and has accused Uyghur activists of lying. The report’s release comes following a series of delays and intense lobbying by Beijing to block its release -- including a last-minute push from Chinese officials at the UN -- and many victims and activists feared that the report would be suppressed and would make attempts at accountability impossible.

“This UN report is extremely important. It paves the way for meaningful and tangible action by member states, UN bodies, and the business community,” said World Uyghur Congress President Dolkun Isa. “Accountability starts now.”

Abuses In Xinjiang

The report corroborates the findings that have been made public in recent years by eyewitnesses, independent research, and leaked Chinese state documents detailing a vast internment system.

When news of the detentions began trickling out, the Chinese authorities at first denied such a detention campaign, but later shifted to saying that the camps were part of a strategy to provide basic job and language skills to bolster employment and combat radicalism.

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According to the UN report, they found that a “pattern of large-scale arbitrary detention occurred” in Xinjiang’s camp system from at least 2017 to 2019. The document did not give an exact figure of the number of people detained and instead used an earlier UN estimate that ranged from tens of thousands to more than 1 million Uyghurs and other minorities interned by the Chinese.

Citing dozens of eyewitness interviews, the report detailed what it characterized as a pattern of torture and other forms of “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” violations, and “credible” allegations of sexual and gender-based violence, including rape.

“Their accounts included being beaten with batons, including electric batons while strapped in a so-called ‘tiger chair’; being subjected to interrogation with water being poured in their faces; prolonged solitary confinement; and being forced to sit motionless on small stools for prolonged periods of time,” the report said.

Camp detainees also faced “constant hunger” and “constant surveillance” and were forced to memorize patriotic songs and other propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party, as well as being subjected to regular injections and mandated to take pills that made them drowsy. The report notes that these actions “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

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“This will be a watershed moment in changing international opinion and will lay the groundwork for a meaningful response to the atrocities by UN member states and the international business community alike,” Bradley Jardine, a fellow at the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, told RFE/RL.

With the report published, activists are now hoping it can be used to produce concrete action by corporations and governments to put greater pressure on Beijing.

A group of 60 Uyghur organizations from 20 countries called for government to take the next steps by demanding multilateral bodies be more accountable, and for sustained investigations of abuses in Xinjiang to take place. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) -- an international cross-party group of legislators -- also called for greater due diligence from corporations “to remove supply chains at risk of being tainted by forced labor in the Uyghur Region, in line with their commitments to tackle modern slavery.”

“As activists we always wish it would be stronger, but given the power of the high commissioner's office, it's a good report and baseline for governments and companies around the world to react to,” said Laura Harth, campaign director for the rights group Safeguard Defenders.

China's Response

Beijing, which saw the report in advance, denied allegations of abuse and pushed back strongly.

A Chinese response to the report was accompanied by a 131-page counterreport, emphasizing the threat of terrorism and the stability that its government program of so-called “de-radicalization” and “vocational education and training centers” has brought to Xinjiang.

Beijing’s delegation to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva also rejected the findings of the report, which it said “smeared and slandered China” and interfered in the country's internal affairs.

“This so-called ‘assessment’ is a politicized document that ignores the facts, and fully exposes the intention of the [United States], Western countries, and anti-China forces to use human rights as a political tool,” it said in a statement published on September 1.

China has always insisted that Uyghur militants are waging a violent campaign for an independent state, but Beijing is accused of greatly exaggerating the threat in order to justify repression of the Uyghurs and other Muslim groups.

Following mounting international pressure and growing evidence of abuses in Xinjiang, Beijing has insisted that its internment system has been reduced in scope and instead moved towards longer imprisonments, which the report notes “strongly suggests there has been a shift towards formal incarcerations as the principal means for large-scale imprisonment and deprivation of liberty.”

The Long Road To Publishing

Bachelet's office indicated that an investigation into allegations of genocide in Xinjiang was under way over a year ago, but its publication has been delayed multiple times, leading to accusations from some rights groups that Beijing was pressuring her to bury damning findings.

Speaking to reporters in late August, she admitted that she was under “tremendous pressure to publish or not to publish” the report.

Criticism of Bachelet intensified following a May visit to China, where she made only a short trip to Xinjiang and mostly focused on high-level discussions with Chinese officials. Several Uyghur activist groups denounced her visit as whitewashing abuses and accused her of succumbing to Beijing’s expanded influence at the UN.

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Rayhan Asat, an Uyghur human rights lawyer whose brother was detained in the camp system, told RFE/RL that the report has set the stage for further high-level investigations into abuses in Xinjiang and for launching a fact-finding mission to determine the whereabouts and fate of those who are still unaccounted for since being interned.

“This offers hope that this can end family separation, understand what happened to those who disappeared, and for the release of innocent people,” she said. “I hope this can be a new beginning for this crisis and a path towards some accountability.”

China is investing heavily in Kyrgyzstan’s underfunded media sector, expanding its state-run outlets and building partnerships with local companies in an effort to shape the information landscape in the Central Asian country, according to a new report.

The study of Chinese inroads into Kyrgyz media, which was released on August 25 by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Academy in Bishkek, is part of a multiyear research project into the tactics used by Chinese state actors to create positive coverage about China, spread negative political talking points about the United States and the West, and suppress or drown out stories about China’s interests in Central Asia, such as concerns over an internment-camp system for Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its neighboring Xinjiang Province.

“Money talks, and that’s a problem because [Kyrgyzstan’s] media sector is very underfunded,” Niva Yau, senior researcher at the OSCE Academy and the author of the report, told RFE/RL. “[China] has lots of money to invest and spend, and it can use that to build relationships and control access and opportunities that can restrict negative reports and flood the information space with [positive stories] about China.”

Among some of the key strategies documented by Yau for influencing local narratives, she found the most common were: paid content within Kyrgyz media and funding partnerships; expanding the presence of Chinese media in Kyrgyzstan; and relying heavily on social media networks and online influencers to help spread messages.

The report also notes that the Chinese Embassy in Bishkek plays an important role in coordinating local content by arranging free reporting trips, offering funding, and consultations -- all incentives that local journalists named when surveyed as being factors in the publishing of favorable stories and the withholding of negative ones.

“This world is all very murky and gray,” said Yau. “There is lots of clumsiness to observe on the Chinese side, but it is still growing and also adapting, especially on social media where there is lots of targeted content and ads across various platforms that can be difficult to trace.”

Long-Term View

Central Asia, which borders western China, has been a strategic priority for Beijing in recent decades as it has sought to build up its political and economic influence with deeper ties to local elites, militaries, and investing through its multibillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure project.

But Yau said her research highlights how Chinese engagement and influence in Central Asia -- and particularly in Kyrgyzstan -- is no longer confined to these areas and is also aiming to build ties to a broader section of society.

Control over the information space has been a key part of the Chinese government’s control at home and this has extended to foreign countries as Beijing’s footprint has expanded abroad. China’s leadership has been transparent in outlining these goals in official documents and has identified neighboring regions and the developing world as a whole as an area of opportunity.

China has been spearheading agreements with Kyrgyz media companies since the early 2000s. These deals have ranged from arrangements that allow for local outlets to reprint Chinese content as they wish to more stringent commitments about reproducing domestic and world news reporting, as well as producing specific content for lifestyle, technology, finance, and travel.

According to a list published by the Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry in 2022, there are three Chinese state-run media companies registered in the country, which include Xinhua, Wen Wei Po, and the Silk Road Observer. Two more -- Dolon TV and Land Bridge -- operate in Kyrgyzstan as private Chinese media companies.

Yau said it is still difficult to determine the overall effectiveness of this Chinese media strategy, but preliminary research carried out by her and the OSCE Academy, including a mass phone survey, found that it was successful in shaping perceptions around internment camps in Xinjiang.

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International researchers and Western governments estimate that China has detained more than 1 million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other groups in a vast camp system in Xinjiang. Beijing has defended the camps as necessary for fighting extremism in the region and denied any human rights violations, although credible evidence exists of torture, forced sterilization, and other abuses.

According to Yau’s research, a great deal of the trips provided to Kyrgyz journalists have been to take them to Xinjiang, where they were shown idealized depictions of the region, complete with prosperous villages and development projects. These stories are then published locally by Kyrgyz outlets, which Yau said serves to confuse audiences and create distrust over other reporting about the camp system and accompanying abuses.

“It’s a strategy of two things for coverage around Xinjiang: The first tactic is to suppress media attention as much as possible, and the other is to produce other stories that can confuse audiences because it is so [polarizing] compared to other information available,” she said. “At the end of the day, I think that’s where it’s most effective. Maybe it doesn’t convince anyone, but it can make them suspicious of these [accusations] against the Chinese government.”

Inroads And Obstacles

While the report documents how China’s media strategy has been effective in Kyrgyzstan, taking advantage of the country’s relatively free media space, Yau noted there are still difficulties when it comes to adapting its approach to local preferences.

“[China] is quite immature when it comes to global media. They just copy and paste that model [from home] when they go overseas and in many cases refuse to listen to the local people that work for them,” Yau said.

In one anecdote, a Kyrgyz producer told her he had been approached by a Chinese delegation that wanted to jointly produce a movie for local audiences. He said they pitched him a film about a Chinese man coming to work in Kyrgyzstan, where he falls in love with a Kyrgyz woman. When the local producer told them that this would be poorly received and seen as provocative, he said he was shocked to learn that the Chinese delegation was completely unaware of anti-China protests in the country and that interracial marriage had been a factor in rising Sinophobia in some areas.

Another obstacle that China faces in Kyrgyzstan is a lack of enthusiasm from local employees for working with Chinese entities and projects. Yau surveyed multiple current and former Kyrgyz who worked for or with Chinese media and, while they said they were attracted by better pay, many acknowledged they knew they were producing propaganda or even outright disinformation.

“For many people, their heart's not in it. It’s something pragmatic because there’s no other option,” Yau said. “Given any other opportunity, they likely wouldn’t choose China as a partner, which I think is [representative] of the wider perception of China in this country.”