Minutes before her four-year term was set to end on August 31, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet finally released the agency’s deeply disturbing report on China’s already well-documented human rights abuses of Uyghur and other Muslim ethnic minorities in the province of Xinjiang.
Yet the response by the Labor government has — given its past urging on the subject — been limp: Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong called on Beijing to address the findings, something it clearly has no intention of doing.
While some critics have slammed the UN’s refusal to use the term genocide — a term Wong raised in opposition — the report has put an official stamp on multiple previous detailed research projects on Beijing’s program of concentration camps, family separation, forced sterilisation and labour, including one by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
As Professor Justine Nolan, director of the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW wrote, the report leaves neither Beijing nor the companies that continue to source products from Xinjiang room for plausible deniability.
Resource-rich Xinjiang is also a key strategic province for China as it shares borders with India, Russia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as several central Asian nations and Mongolia.
It produces coal, gas, lithium, zinc and lead, and about 45% of the world’s polysilicon, a key component in photovoltaic solar panels, and is a large producer of renewable energy in its vast, windswept spaces. Xinjiang also produces huge amounts of cotton that account for about about 85% of China’s cotton — itself 20% of the world’s total — for its world-leading textiles and garments manufacturing industry that underpins China’s exports.
It is this that has been in the spotlight as Beijing serial human rights abuses centred on so-called re-education camps that house as many as 1 million people and that have been branded modern-day gulags.
“The latest UN report leaves no doubt large-scale arbitrary detention has occurred. Attempts to pass off camps as vocational or training centres are simply not credible,“ Nolan said.
“As well the possibility of goods sourced directly from Xinjiang being made with slave labour, this new UN report also notes the ‘labour transfer schemes’ that force people from Xinjiang to work elsewhere in China. These transfers mean goods produced in factories throughout China may be tainted with modern slavery.”
Many countries have moved to try to clamp down on profiteering from Xinjiang’s labour camps — but Australia not so much. In December 2021, the US Congress overwhelmingly adopted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act which passed the House 428-1 and the Senate unanimously.
In June the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning crimes against humanity against the Uyghurs in China and called for a ban on the import of products made by forced labour. A range of nations including the UK, US, Canada, the Netherlands and Ireland have passed resolutions recognising China’s crimes against humanity.
For all its rhetorical aggression against China and despite making the right noises about Xinjiang, the Morrison government didn’t do anything concrete. It failed to progress the Customs Amendment (Banning Goods Produced By Uyghur Forced Labour) Bill 2020 that was passed by the Senate last year after being introduced by former senator Rex Patrick.
In opposition, Wong demanded that the Morison government taken further action and decide if it believed that the abuses in Xinjiang constituted genocide.
“We call on the Morrison government to provide its assessment of what is happening in Xinjiang — based on all the information available to its agencies — and what it is doing to address the situation,” she said in April 2021.
But since gaining government, she has not taken further action despite the urging of international human rights groups, and is using the same line of her predecessors — that Australian can rely on its Modern Slavery Act 2018. But critics do not think it’s enough.
In response to the UN report there was simply more rhetoric from Wong’s office: “The Australian government is deeply concerned about the findings of the office of the high commissioner for human rights’ report on Xinjiang. It concludes that serious human rights violations have been committed in Xinjiang.
“Australia has consistently condemned human rights violations against the Uyghurs and other ethnic and Muslim minorities in Xinjiang and across China. The Australian government has emphasised the importance of transparency and accountability in calling on China to grant meaningful and unfettered access to Xinjiang for United Nations experts, and other independent observers.”
And there was no mention of genocide, one way or the other. Given the incontrovertible evidence of the horrors of Xinjiang, long known and now given the UN stamp, it’s clear the time for just words is over, just as Wong has previously demanded.
If she’s serious, Wong can recommend passing Patrick’s bill by the House of Representatives — where his former colleague Rebekha Sharkie has presented it — and adopt a resolution in the same vein as the UK, EU and others.
The release of the report ended a mammoth effort by Beijing to repress confirmation of its horrific program but there was deep uncertainty as to whether the report would see the light of day right up until its release.
China has predictably dismissed its findings, and the process of getting the report released has exposed the heavy-handedness of Beijing’s tactics to get information it does not want in the public eye repressed. Much of this uncertainty had been created by Bachelet, the former Chilean president, after her visit to China — including Xinjiang — in May. This was the first such visit by someone in her position to the People’s Republic since 2005.
“The purpose of the private visit is to enhance exchanges and cooperation between both sides and promote the international cause of human rights,” a Chinese Foreign ministry spokesman said at the time.
The visit, which came three years after Bachelet first signalled she wanted to visit, was conducted in a “closed loop” or “bubble” to prevent any COVID-19 transmission, but this meant Bachelet could not have any spontaneous in-person meetings with anyone not vetted by the state.
A document showing China’s efforts to suppress the report was leaked to Reuters in July.
“The assessment [on Xinjiang], if published, will intensify politicisation and bloc confrontation in the area of human rights, undermine the credibility of the OHCHR [office of the high commissioner for human rights], and harm the cooperation between OHCHR and member states,” the letter said, referring to Bachelet’s office. “We strongly urge madame high commissioner not to publish such an assessment.”
It’s a relief that Beijing’s efforts failed, but the exposition of its tactics highlights the lengths it will go to goes to the old adage that the price of freedom is indeed eternal vigilance — and plenty of pushback.
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