Australia has expressed deep concern over new reports that Uighur women are subject to widespread abuse within internment camps in China’s Xinjiang region.
A BBC report on Wednesday recounted first hand accounts of how women in the camps have been raped, sexually abused and tortured.
The BBC said “several former detainees and a guard have told the BBC they experienced or saw evidence of an organised system of mass rape, sexual abuse and torture.”
A spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne said Australia has been consistent in raising “significant concerns” about human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
“These latest reports of systematic torture and abuse of women are deeply disturbing and raise serious questions regarding the treatment of Uighurs and other religious and ethnic minorities in Xinjiang,” the spokesperson said.
The United Nations has cited credible reports that at least one million members of the minority have been held in political re-education camps.
Australia has also raised reports of arbitrary detention, restrictions on freedom of religion, pervasive surveillance and forced labour in bilateral discussions with China and at the United Nations.
The spokesperson said it considered transparency to be of “utmost importance” and that Australia continued to urge China to allow international observers “immediate, meaningful and unfettered” access to Xinjiang.
Labor’s foreign affairs spokesperson Penny Wong said the accounts shared by the women were deeply troubling.
“Anyone reading these women’s testimonies would be disgusted by what they were subjected to,” she said.
“This evidence is counter to China’s international human rights obligations and is not consistent with the behaviour of a respected and responsible international power.”
US ‘deeply disturbed’ by reports of systemic abuse
The United States also says it is “deeply disturbed” by the reports of systemic abuse.
“We are deeply disturbed by reports, including first-hand testimony, of systematic rape and sexual abuse against women in internment camps for ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang,” a State Department spokesperson said.
The previous US administration of former President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Chinese officials and firms it linked to abuses in Xinjiang.
The administration of new President Joe Biden, who took office earlier this month, has made clear it plans to continue a tough approach to Beijing.
China denies accusations of abuses in Xinjiang, and has said the complexes it set up in the region provided vocational training to help stamp out Islamist extremism and separatism.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the BBC report was “wholly without factual basis” and charged that the people interviewed for it had been “proved multiple times” to be “actors disseminating false information.”
Last year, a report published by a Washington think tank accused China of using forced sterilization, forced abortion and coercive family planning against Muslims in Xinjiang.
Additional reporting by Reuters.
