China’s atrocious behaviour has been called out by the UN yet most of its 1.4 billion people have no idea it’s even happening.

“Disappeared” academics, lawyers and artists. Enormous detention facilities. Forced sterilisation. Bulldozed mosques. The evidence of Chinese forced assimilation of ethnic minorities is overwhelming. But it won’t let its own citizens see any of it.

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) censors are working overtime.

And the Great Firewall is at full strength in separating its internet services from the rest of the world.

As a result, Chinese citizens have seen virtually no mention of a damning new United Nations report into systematic human rights abuses.

The report said that “allegations of patterns of torture, or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence.”

Social media sites like WeChat and Weibo are being closely monitored for any reference to the 46-page document addressing “serious human rights violations” in the western province of Xinjiang and occupied Tibet.

All links to the original document are being removed.

PRC censored again our WeChat & Weibo posts on @UNHumanRights’ Xinjiang report showing appalling treatment of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. “The censor’s sword pierces deeply the heart of free expression.” – Earl Warren. Read the report: https://t.co/ieNuxRXd01

But Beijing’s not withholding its anger from the rest of the world.

It vented its fury in an official response – declaring the UN “wantonly smears and slanders China, and interferes in China’s internal affairs”.

It quickly issued its own 122-page document detailing the “extremism” threat of the Uyghur people and the “counter-terror” operations against them.

And its ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomats and commentators have been frantically attempting to demean and discredit every aspect of the report.

United Nations OHCHR Xinjiang report is irresponsible https://t.co/iOkKnPg50q via @cgtnofficial

Internally, though, it’s a different matter.

On Wednesday, US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns tweeted that even his attempts to share the UN document with Chinese citizens had been blocked.

“This deepens and reaffirms our grave concern regarding the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity that PRC government authorities are perpetrating against Uyghurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang,” Blinken said.

“Perhaps the most revealing fact to note today, 48 hours after the release of the Xinjiang report, is that there has been almost no reporting at all inside China,” said China Media Project director David Bandurski.

“If the external messaging of China’s leadership has been all about pique, its internal messaging has been about creating a vacuum,” he writes.

The UN report itself finds spin to be inherent in Beijing’s operations.

It states that the Chinese Communist Party “conflates what might otherwise be construed as matters of personal choice in relation to religious practice with ‘extremism’, and ‘extremism’ with the phenomenon of terrorism’”.

This is then used to significantly broaden “the range of conduct that can be targeted under a counter-terrorism objective or pretext”.

Evidence of that conduct is detailed in the report.

“It describes as “credible” allegations of torture, including rape and sexual violence, discrimination, mass detention, forced labour and widespread surveillance,” says University of New South Wales Professor of Law Justine Nolan. “It is no longer possible for anyone – including the many companies that continue to source products from Xinjiang – to claim plausible deniability.”

The report comes at an inconvenient time for Chairman Xi.

He’s preparing for his coronation as “great leader for life” at the National Congress on October 16.

The event only happens once every five years. Its rubber stamp is necessary to give the abandonment of the Communist Party’s constitutional term limits that would typically result in Chairman Xi being sent into retirement.

“The silence tells its own story,” says Bandurski, “Xinjiang is a matter so sensitive to China’s leadership that the only voices permitted to speak are the megaphones intended for external audiences.”

The power of the pen

The United Nations remains unwilling to call out Chinese behaviour as genocide.

The word – if not the act – has powerful legal ramifications.

Instead, it concluded that the “arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups … may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

It’s just a word.

But every element of its dictionary definition can be found in the report.

It’s just that China’s international standing may hinge upon its use.

“There is a growing scholarly consensus that genocide is the right word in this case,” says China studies expert Jo Smith Finley of Britain’s Newcastle University. “The UN report, while not framing those crimes in the context of the UN convention, finds credible evidence for acts that meet the criteria.”

Beijing had thought it was in the clear.

Former UN high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet published the document just minutes before her retirement took effect. But she had returned from a recent tour of Xinjiang without addressing the many allegations of ethnic suppression.

But even now, controversy surrounds her work.

US media reports suggest the section on the forced sterilisation of Uyghur women had been “watered down” to avert a finding of genocide.

For its part, Beijing calls the policy “population optimisation”.

Now the angry Chinese foreign minister Zhao Lijian has been left blustering that the report is “illegal, null and void” and “a patchwork of disinformation politically driven by the US and some Western forces.”

But Beijing may have been handed a ‘get out of jail free’ card.

“The UN report calls on the Chinese government to release those who have been arbitrarily detained, and to investigate the allegations of human rights violations. This is like asking a fox to guard the hen house,” says Professor Nolan. “What is needed is international action and pressure to force change.”

Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel

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