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Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech in Urumqi, in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, August 26, 2023. 
© 2023 Shen Hong/Xinhua via Getty Images

(New York) – Chinese President Xi Jinping’s pronouncement that China intends to maintain its counterterrorism policies in the northwestern Xinjiang region indicates continuing crimes against humanity there, Human Rights Watch said today. One year ago, on August 31, 2022, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a damning report finding that the Chinese government’s rights violations against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang “may constitute … crimes against humanity.”

Earlier in 2023, the UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, acknowledged the need for “concrete follow up” on the report’s conclusions. However, he has yet to brief the UN Human Rights Council on the report or on his office’s ongoing monitoring of the situation in Xinjiang.

“Over the past year, Chinese officials have maintained their abusive ‘strike hard’ policies, crushing the rights of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims,” said Maya Wang, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “UN member countries should not stay silent in the face of crimes against humanity.”

In a speech while traveling in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on August 26, President Xi affirmed “the outcomes of [China’s] Xinjiang policies.” He pledged to “consolidate hard-won social stability,” ensure that “the public [in Xinjiang] have correct views … on ethnicity, history and religion,” and “forge a consciousness of a united Chinese nation.”

Since 2017, the Chinese government has carried out a widespread and systematic attack against Uyghurs and Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang. It includes mass arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, separation of families, forced labor, sexual violence, and violations of reproductive rights. Human Rights Watch in 2021 concluded that these violations constituted “crimes against humanity.”

Since the 2022 UN report, Beijing has demonstrated little change in the trajectory of its Xinjiang policies. Although some “political re-education” camps appear closed, there has been no mass release from prisons, where a half million Turkic Muslims have been held since the start of the crackdown. Uyghurs abroad continue to have little to no contact with their family members, some do not even know if their loved ones taken into custody or forcibly disappeared are still alive. Xinjiang authorities also deepened their efforts to forcibly assimilate Uyghurs. The Xinjiang Communist Party secretary, Ma Xingrui, vowed in November 2022 to continue “counterterrorism and stability maintenance” measures, require “various ethnic groups … to fully embed” into the Chinese nation, “Sinicize” Islam so it is consistent with “socialist values,” and deepen cultural and ideological control over the region.

Foreign governments have condemned Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang, and some have imposed targeted and other sanctions on Chinese government officials, agencies, and companies implicated in rights violations. Following the publication of the UN report, a group of countries tried to put the Xinjiang situation on the formal agenda of the UN Human Rights Council for discussion, which Beijing and its allies narrowly defeated. The razor-thin margin showed that long-overdue scrutiny of the Chinese government’s grave international crimes is within reach, Human Rights Watch said.

There is a pressing need for concerned governments to take strong, coordinated action to advance accountability given the gravity of the abuses in Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch said. The governments should:

Work toward the successful adoption of a UN resolution to set up an investigative mechanism, with a mandate to investigate alleged violations in Xinjiang, identify those responsible, and make recommendations to advance accountability.
Improve efforts to document the numbers and identities of those who remain detained, imprisoned, and forcibly disappeared in Xinjiang, and work toward reuniting families.
Impose targeted sanctions on Chinese officials implicated in serious abuses in Xinjiang.
Consider pursuing criminal cases under the concept of “universal jurisdiction,” which allows a country’s domestic judicial system to investigate and prosecute certain grave crimes, such as torture, even if they were not committed on its territory.

Türk, the UN rights chief, should update the UN Human Rights Council on the situation in Xinjiang, following up on the recommendations of his office’s report, and present an action plan for advancing accountability.

He should also spearhead an initiative, possibly jointly with special procedures mandate holders such as the Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances and with governments with Uyghur diaspora populations, to help victims and family members trace missing persons. Considerable information has already been gathered, some of which is publicly available. Yet there has been no high-level, coordinated initiative specifically focused on finding and pressing for the release of those arbitrarily detained in Xinjiang.

“Governments and the UN rights office should seize the opportunity of the Xinjiang report anniversary to send a clear message that Beijing will not get away with grave international crimes,” Wang said. “They should announce a range of measures to hold the Chinese government accountable, and to compel the authorities to improve the lives of long-suffering Uyghurs.”

As of 31 July this year, the number of suspected cases of measles and rubella in Yemen has reached almost 34,300 cases and 413 deaths, compared with 27,000 cases and 220 associated deaths in 2022.

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Men charged with public displays of same-sex affection gather within the premises of the Federal High Court in Lagos, Nigeria, March 3, 2020. 
© 2022 Temilade Adelaja/Reuters

On Tuesday, police in Nigeria’s southern Delta State arrested several dozen people accused of violating the country’s anti-gay law by allegedly participating in a gay wedding. The police publicly paraded the suspects before the media, interrogating them about the accusations, assaulting their dignity and rights to privacy, association, and a fair trial, among others.

In a media statement on August 29, the Delta State commissioner of police, Wale Abbas, said 67 men and women were arrested at a hotel in Warri for conducting and attending the purported gay wedding, which is prohibited under Nigeria’s Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act.

The police shamelessly livestreamed the media spectacle on their official Delta State police Facebook page.

In 2022, Nigeria’s Federal High Court found that pretrial media parades violate the country’s constitution and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which guarantee respect for the dignity of the person and the right to a fair trial, including the presumption of innocence.

Despite this ruling, police have continued the abusive practice with total impunity.

Nigeria’s Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, enacted in 2014, criminalizes same-sex marriage and public displays of same-sex relationships with prison sentences of up to 14 and 10 years respectively. It also punishes establishing, supporting, and participating in gay organizations with up to 10 years in prison.

Human Rights Watch found in a 2016 report that the law had served to legitimize abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, including extortion, arbitrary arrest, torture and other ill-treatment, and sexual violence.

The police used the law for the first time in 2019 to prosecute 47 men accused of same-sex public displays of affection in Lagos State. A court dismissed the case because the police failed to appear and present witnesses.

Nigerian authorities should ensure accountability for the police’s unlawful media parade and urgently end the practice. They should release without charge everyone arrested under the anti-gay law, and seek its repeal. No one’s lives should be criminalized simply because of their real or perceived sexual orientation.

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 Spanish football federation president, Luis Rubiales talks to Queen Letizia of Spain on stage during the FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023 Final match between Spain and England at Stadium Australia on August 20, 2023 in Sydney, Australia.
© 2023 Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

When Spanish Football Federation President Luis Rubiales refused to step down after kissing Spanish football player and 2023 World Cup champion Jenni Hermoso without her consent, he instead justified his actions. In a speech to the general assembly of the Spanish Football Federation, Rubiales centered himself as the victim, blamed “false feminism” for committing a “social assassination” against him, and shouted five times: “I will not resign!”

Rubiales’ obliviousness to sexual abuse and workplace harassment should finally force FIFA, football’s governing body, to do what it has long failed to do: address the culture of sexual violence and gender discrimination in women’s football.

Shockingly, there are sexual abuse complaints against at least twenty of FIFA’s 211 national federations. 

Beyond Rubiales’ personal responsibility for his actions, FIFA, and all football associations have an institutional responsibility to stop violence and harassment of women players. It took FIFA almost a week to suspend Rubiales for 90 days. In the meantime, the Spanish Football Federation pressured Hermoso to back Rubiales, and when she denied the kiss was consensual, the federation threatened her with legal actions.

It is not uncommon for institutions to only blame the person committing the offense, who, when “caught,” is forced by public pressure to resign – a personal reputation management move. But then larger structural issues allowing for abuse remain and institutions keep working as usual, with no good mechanisms in place, and no systemic harms prevention and reparation approaches.

Women football players around the world have had enough and are furiously pushing for change. All players deserve the right to play football without concerns for safety in the workplace. They have the right to compete with the same economic conditions enjoyed by male football players. They have the right to have more female coaches and federation leaders. They have the right to play football without having to make a statement about their rights after every game.

The Rubiales case should focus the football leadership in Spain, Europe, and internationally on the need for long-overdue reforms to protect and respect women players. Implementation of such reforms should be a key consideration for FIFA when deciding the location of key events including the Women’s and Men’s World Cups. Above all, it should hasten FIFA’s reforms to protect women, including by setting up an independent Safe Sport Entity, to report and investigate abuse, protect survivors, and get abusers at all levels out of sport.