The International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) recalled on Monday the need for further action to hold China accountable for grave rights violations in Xinjiang.

The ISHR calls for the Chinese government to ensure timely implementation of the recommendations made by the the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in addition to permitting investigations in the region. It also calls on the UN Human Rights Council to install a “monitoring and reporting mechanism on the human rights situation” to ensure the participation of UN bodies for transparency and the protection of human rights.

In its August 2022 landmark report, the OHCHR affirmed that the Chinese government had committed serious human rights violations through an anti-terrorism law system that imposes restrictions with discriminatory components on Uyghurs. The report holds China accountable for “restrictions on religious identity and expression, as well as the rights to privacy and movement,” which hinders the human rights protected under international law.

The allegations of cases of disappearances of members of the Uyghur and other Muslim ethnic minority communities in the Xinjiang region grew in 2017. A year later, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances reported a surge of cases of re-education of Uyghur members with the pretext of “countering religious extremism” in the region.

China has, since the publication of the report, denied and rejected the allegations. Its allies similarly argued that the allegations are an “interference in China’s internal affairs.” Raphaël Viana David, ISHR’s China program manager responded:

It is deeply regrettable when States engage in double standards and fail to uphold universal human rights.  We are dismayed that while 60 States from the global South were prepared to express solidarity and support a Pakistani-led statement regarding Israel’s abuses in Lebanon, 80 States from the same world region were prepared to abandon such principles and the rights of Uyghur Muslims and other minorities by signing statements which greenlight China’s grave human rights abuses.

Recently various states have also remarked on the need for further action to ensure human rights protection. The OHCHR released a statement in August 2024 updating information on the initial assessment. In this report, the UN agency recognized again the government’s inaction to protect human rights and the persistence of wrongful policies. Similarly a month later, a group of countries labelled as the “Xinjiang Core Group” released a joint statement urging China to free “all individuals arbitrarily and unjustly detained in Xinjiang, urgently clarifying the fate and whereabouts of missing family members, and facilitating safe contact and reunion.”