Beijing has aggressively fought attempts inside the U.N. system to raise address its atrocities targeting Uyghurs.
China urged other countries to boycott an upcoming U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum-hosted event on Beijing’s atrocities against Uyghurs, National Review has exclusively learned.
In a letter dated April 24, China’s diplomatic outpost urged other countries to skip a panel event taking place today in New York, which seeks to “raise awareness and galvanize discussion about the role of the United Nations to respond to and prevent mass atrocities in the Xinjiang region” on the third anniversary of a key U.N. report on the matter.
The letter stated that the Chinese mission “has the honor to express our resolute opposition to this event and strongly recommend your mission NOT to participate in this anti-China event.”
“It’s clear to all that it is a politically-motivated event,” the Chinese mission’s letter states. “The organizers and speakers are obsessed with fabricating lies and spreading malicious disinformation about China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region with no respect for truth.” It also called the U.N. report, published by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), a “patchwork of disinformation based on the political scheme of anti-China forces” to contain China.
The State Department found in 2021 that the Chinese Communist Party is perpetrating genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs. Then, the following year, the OHCHR issued a report detailing Chinese abuses in Xinjiang and assessing that Beijing may be carrying out crimes against humanity.
The Holocaust Museum’s Simon Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, which is organizing the event, has played an active role in advocacy efforts surrounding U.S. responses to the Chinese abuses. Those efforts have previously drawn attention from the Chinese authorities. Chen Weihua, a writer with the Global Times propaganda outlet, rebuked the Holocaust Museum in 2022 after it posted a video comparing the Berlin 1936 Olympics to the Beijing 2022 games.
“The organizers and panelists are esteemed human rights institutions and experts compelled to speak out against China atrocity atrocities and growing institutional capture of the UN system — a capture that enables the continued commission and cover-up of atrocities in Xinjiang,” said Rayhan Asat, an Atlantic Council fellow and human rights lawyer who advocates for the release of her brother from Xinjiang, where he has been imprisoned for nine years. Asat is one of the event panelists.
“Some of us have family members trapped in China’s concentration camp system — like my brother, Ekpar Asat. It is outrageous that the Chinese government is attempting to silence those who bravely speak the truth.”
The letter is the latest glimpse at the ways in which China throws its weight around at the U.N. to impede human rights promotion efforts that the Chinese Communist Party views as a threat to its legitimacy.
Beijing has aggressively fought attempts inside the U.N. system to raise address its atrocities targeting Uyghurs, rallying countries to block resolutions on the topic at the U.N. Human Rights Council and to even endorse its policies in Xinjiang. The Chinese authorities have also deployed an army of government-backed non-governmental groups to the U.N.’s facilities in Geneva, where they have harassed Uyghur advocates and Beijing’s other opponents, according to a recent report published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Chinese diplomats have also targeted similar events hosted by third parties on the sidelines of the U.N. In 2023, China’s U.N. mission sent countries a similar letter urging them “NOT to participate” in a panel on the situation in Xinjiang that took place the week of the U.N. General Assembly’s high-level week. Several countries sent representatives to the event anyway.