Penny Wong urges Beijing to act on UN’s damning Xinjiang report

The Australian government is ‘deeply concerned’ about the findings in a new UN report on Xinjiang, as the Coalition offers support for ‘targeted sanctions’.

A facility believed to be a re-education camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained, in Artux, north of Kashgar, in China's western Xinjiang region. Picture: AFP

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has called for Beijing to address the damning findings in an authoritative UN investigation into China’s widespread human rights atrocities in Xinjiang.

The UN report – informed by years of research and first-hand testimonies by Uighurs and other minorities – found serious human rights violations had been committed in China’s far west, including torture, rape and other violations that may constitute “crimes against humanity”.

Senator Wong said the Albanese government was “deeply concerned” about the findings in the report, which amounted to one of the sharpest international rebukes of Beijing since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

“Australia expects all countries to adhere to their international human rights obligations, and we join with others in the international community in calling on the Chinese government to address the concerns raised in this report,” Senator Wong said.

Experts cited in the UN report estimate more than a million ­Uighurs and other minorities have passed through internment camps in Xinjiang since 2017.

Chinese President Xi Jinping defended his approach as “completely correct”, while a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said the UN had behaved as an “accomplice of the US and the West”.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham said the Albanese government should consider using Australia’s new Magnitsky-style legislation to impose “targeted sanctions” on senior Chinese officials involved in the documented abuses.

“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,” Senator Birmingham said.

He also called for Beijing to end its “intimidation and reprisals” against Uighur and other minorities in Australia and elsewhere who have advocated for their family members in Xinjiang.

One of those in Australia’s harassed Uighur community is Adam Turan, whose 79-year-old father was tortured in a detention camp in Xinjiang. His father died just weeks after he was released in 2018.

Mr Turan, who lives in Adelaide, said he was disappointed the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet did not call Beijing’s atrocities a “genocide” in her report.

“People, including my father, and my brothers and sister, they all were detained only based on their ethnicity,” Mr Turan told The Australian. “There’s no due process, there’s no trial … I don’t know what else to call it,” he said.

Ms Bachelet was condemned by Uighur activists and human rights groups for delaying her report, which was released 13 minutes before her four-year term as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights came to an end on Wednesday evening.

China went to extreme lengths to try to stop its publication, enlisting countries to lobby on its behalf and warning Ms Bachelet to not be influenced by “anti-China forces”.

Australia’s former ambassador to the UN, Gary Quinlan, said much of the criticism of Ms Bachelet failed to understand the realities of international politics.

“She’s produced what is clearly a pretty forceful report. She’s put a premium on its credibility,” Mr Quinlan said.

The UN report cited research by Canberra’s Australian Strategic Policy Institute on China’s detention network in Xinjiang. Beijing was so enraged with ASPI’s influential research that it accused it of “spreading untrue reports” and “peddling lies” in the list of 14 grievances Chinese diplomats gave Canberra in 2020.

China’s diplomats in Geneva continued those attacks in a rambling, propaganda-laden 131-page document published after the UN report. They cited the Australian affiliate of the LaRouche movement – a fringe conspiracy group – in China’s attempt to smear ASPI’s groundbreaking research on Xinjiang’s detention network.

“They’re on the wrong side of history,” said Vicky Xu, the lead researcher on an ASPI report on forced labour in Xinjiang.

“When they don’t have reason on their side, I guess the only people left to corroborate with the propaganda department in Beijing are conspiracy theorists,” she said.