UN High Commissioner Turk: Concerned about the situation in the Xinjiang region

Beijing prevented a UN debate on the Xinjiang region in the fall. UN High Commissioner Türk now took up the sensitive issue in the annual report – and made it clear that he would not let up on human rights issues in China.

In his annual report to the Human Rights Council, UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk addressed the situation in China briefly but very clearly. A sensitive issue – because only last fall China successfully prevented the Council from even debating the human rights situation in the Chinese region of Xinjiang. At the time, a slim majority rejected the suggestion by Western states that the Xinjiang report by Türk’s predecessor, Michelle Bachelet, be discussed in the Human Rights Council.

Türk has now made it clear that the report is not off the table for him, any more than other human rights issues in China. “In the Xinjiang region, my office has documented serious concerns — particularly large-scale arbitrary arrests and ongoing family separations,” he said. “We have made important recommendations that require concrete follow-up. We are also concerned about the severe restrictions on civil space in general, the arbitrary detentions of human rights defenders and lawyers, and the impact of the National Security Law in Hong Kong.”

China looking for allies

He has opened channels of communication with China to pursue a variety of human rights issues, Türk said, making it clear that he is not going to let up. Which – at least according to Olaf Wientzek from the Office of Multilateral Dialogue at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Geneva – should also be understood as a call to the 47 member countries of the Human Rights Council to take up the sensitive issue of Xinjiang again despite the defeat in the autumn vote. Even if China continues to work intensively at the United Nations to find allies for its definition of human rights.

“I think we have to be prepared for the fact that China wants to continue to push through its framing here,” said Wientzek. “That happens either through resolutions, that happens through joint declarations, of course that also happens through pressure.” That could be political pressure, but sometimes also economic pressure – on countries, but also through the mobilization of allies. “And I think that’s a bit the limit of what Volker Türk can do. He can try a balancing act – and the speech also shows this balancing act that he wants to do in order to take as many as possible with him and still not hide things under the carpet to sweep.”

Another topic: contempt for women by influencers

The speech by the High Commissioner for Human Rights was a difficult balancing act with regard to China. Human rights expert Marc Limon from the Geneva think tank Universal Rights Group sees it that way. “I think he’s done just enough to please the West,” Limon said. “But he also probably did just enough to prevent China from breaking off cooperation with his office, which China threatened to do when the report was released.”

Admittedly, China was just one of many countries mentioned in the UN Human Rights Commissioner’s annual report. Türk’s speech was a long list of serious human rights violations and a shocking trip around the world. From Ukraine to Syria, Mali, Ethiopia, Yemen, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iran – to our computer and smartphone screens: The contempt for women of some influencers on the Internet shocks him deeply, Türk said, also with a view to International Women’s Day on Wednesday.

Whether on the Internet, in Afghanistan or in Iran: according to the UN human rights commissioner, the scope and extent of discrimination against women and girls is one of the “most crushing human rights violations worldwide”.