UN report says China's detention of Uighurs may amount to 'crimes against humanity'

A report from the United Nations has accused the People's Republic of China of "serious human rights violations" over its detention of the majority-Muslim Uighur ethnic group in the country's northwestern region of Xinjiang.

The UN's Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights commissioned the report. Investigators found "credible evidence" of torture that could be considered "crimes against humanity," according to the BBC. It also found "patterns of ill-treatment" and "incidents of sexual and gender-based violence." The report further recommended that China should prepare to release "all individuals arbitrarily deprived of their liberty," according to the outlet.

Human rights activists have condemned China following the report. "The United Nations Human Rights Council should use the report to initiate a comprehensive investigation into the Chinese government's crimes against humanity targeting the Uyghurs and others - and hold those responsible to account," said Human Rights Watch China Director Sophie Richardson, per the BBC.

China has engaged in a systematic detention of the ethno-religious minority group that occupies its peripheral border regions in Central Asia, building over 1,200 camps to forcibly house not just Uighurs, but other Muslim minority groups such as Kazakhs and Kyrgyz. The U.S. government has estimated that at least 3 million people have been imprisoned in these facilities during their operational life.

Beijing insists the camps are "vocational training" centers meant to empower impoverished minorities to participate in the Chinese economy, though their "graduates" often find themselves forcibly transported to ethnic Han-majority, Mandarin-speaking regions. Camp survivors have testified to forced sterilization and abortion; torture; forcible worship of Chinese President Xi Jinping, communist indoctrination, and mandatory Mandarin language use. China has denounced many of these witnesses as paid actors, without evidence.

The Xinjiang region was periodically part of various Chinese empires but did not become a permanent fixture of the Middle Kingdom until the Qing conquest in the 1700s during Qianlong's campaigns, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Mandarin is not indigenous to the region and the Uighurs speak a Turkic language.