As the second anniversary of the UN’s critical report on Xinjiang approaches, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday: “The Chinese government persists in committing crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang while denying repression there.”

Maya Wang, HRW’s associate China director, emphasized the necessity of a forceful response from the UN and its member states, given China’s rejection of the 2022 report’s conclusions, saying in a post on X that “the UN high commissioner for human rights and UN member countries should intensify pressure on the Chinese government to end its abuses. These abuses, as documented, include arbitrary detentions, family separations, and cultural suppression.”

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Tuesday acknowledged stagnant progress in Xinjiang due to a persistence of policies that raise questions for the international comment, stating that many of China’s controversial policies remain unchanged. He stressed the importance of ongoing advocacy for China to “release all individuals arbitrarily deprived of their liberty, and to clarify the status and whereabouts of those whose families have been seeking information about them.”

This comes as a pressing new report by Yale University and authored by prominent Uyghur scholar Rayhan Asat, whose brother Ekpar has been in Xinjiang’s detention camps and later in prison for more than eight years, published a report titled “Ughur Race as the Enemy: China’s Legalized Authoritarian Oppression.” The report finds that “racialised atrocity crimes” have been committed against Muslim minorities in China; and with the upcoming Human Rights Council session in September, HRW urges member states to demand an update and actionable recommendations from the UN.