The fact that China is abusing millions of people in Xinjiang is hardly news at this point. We’ve covered it here many times. But this particular UN report has apparently been delayed for at least a year. So, baby steps.

China had urged the UN not to release the report – with Beijing calling it a “farce” arranged by Western powers.

The report assesses claims of abuse against Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities, which China denies.

But investigators said they found “credible evidence” of torture possibly amounting to “crimes against humanity”…

“Despite the Chinese government’s strenuous denials, the UN has now officially recognised that horrific crimes are occurring,” Uyghur Human Rights Project Executive Director Omer Kanat said.

That link above goes to the full report. It sounds like there was a real battle going on behind the scenes between groups that wanted the report released and China which demanded it not be released. In the end China lost:

That the report was released was in some ways as important as its contents.

Outgoing rights chief Bachelet said she had to resist pressure both to publish and not publish. She had announced in June that the report would be released by end of her four-year term on Aug. 31, triggering a swell in back-channel campaigns — including letters from civil society, civilians and governments on both sides of the issue.

Why she waited until the last minute to release the report remains unclear…

“The inexcusable delay in releasing this report casts a stain” on the record of the U.N. human rights office, said Agnès Callamard, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, “but this should not deflect from its significance.”

China is not happy about that of course. It continues to deny there are any human rights problems in Xinjiang and to insist claims to the contrary are all part of a US plot:

“The assessment is a patchwork of false information that serves as political tools for the U.S. and other Western countries to strategically use Xinjiang to contain China,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said. “It again shows that the U.N. Human Rights Office has been reduced to an enforcer and accomplice of the U.S. and other Western countries.”

In a sign of China’s fury, it issued a 122-page rebuttal, entitled “Fight against Terrorism and Extremism in Xinjiang: Truth and Facts,” that was posted by the U.N. along with the report.

China’s 122-page response is here. I’d include a bit of the absurdist conclusion but the document is a pdf that isn’t selectable. In any case you can skip to page 119 to get a sense of how far the gaslighting goes in a one-party state.

Finally, here’s a selection of some of the stories we’ve published previously on this topic, all of which contradict the Chinese paper:

• Guards at Xinjiang re-education camps had standing shoot to kill orders
• Chinese whistleblower: Uyghurs were arrested at night and beaten until they confessed to something
• China’s reeducation camps are big enough to hold a million Uighurs at one time (Update: Kodak Kowtows)
• Amnesty: China has created ‘a dystopian hellscape’ in Xinjiang
• Eyewitnesses tell BBC: Women are being systematically raped in China’s concentration camps for Uighurs
• Woman describes two years in a Chinese re-education camp
• China has built 268 new re-education camps, some large enough to hold 10,000 people

Again, there’s really nothing new in the UN report. What matters is that they published it and didn’t succumb to Chinese pressure to whitewash this.