This is absolutely huge: The UN Special Rapporteur on the matter calls to lift Western sanctions against China because they dangerously undermine basic norms of law (like the presumption of innocence) and violate human rights, particularly in Xinjiang.
The UN Special Rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures and human rights, Prof. Dr. Alena Douhan @AlenaDouhan, has just spent 12 days in China, most of it in Xinjiang, to study “the impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights”. She confirms that the sanctions put on China – mostly by the US, but also other Western states – under the guise of protecting “human rights” are actually very harmful to the very people these sanctions cynically claim to “protect” because they impoverish them, and that they are illegal unilateral coercive measures.
You can read her full 14-page statement here: Report
Here’s a small summary of her report:
She says that the sanctions have a big economic impact on the livelihood of people, particularly in Xinjiang because “due to the risk of sanctions and seizures for any nexus with Xinjiang and consequent reputational damage not only foreign but also Chinese businesses from other regions may hesitate to participate in supply chains that involve entities in Xinjiang, and this out of fear of sanctions.”
These sanctions include the US’s “Uygur Forced Labor Prevention Act of 2021” which automatically assumes that all goods partially or wholly produced in the Xinjiang region are tainted by forced labor, and as such in effect bans all imports from Xinjiang in the US. Which is detrimental not only to the people affected but also in terms of critical supply chains for the world economy, given that – as she reminds in the report – Xinjiang produces “half of the global supply of polycrystalline silicon used for solar power energy”, 20% of the world’s cotton, and 20% of the global production of tomatoes and tomato products.
She says she “received information about enterprises employing thousands of people, which were forced to undergo in short period of time significant cuts in their workforce, in some cases of more than 50%, or small and medium enterprises getting bankrupt. While certain advanced technology and high-tech industries may have managed to absorb such shocks, others with labor-intensive production faced more challenges to readjust and re-recruit part of the lost workforce. Those most likely to be affected are persons in vulnerable situations, including those in informal employment, older workers with less skills and productive capacity, as well as women employed in certain sectors of the economy.”
She says there is little to no due process the companies or people affected can follow to appeal the sanctions, no matter how unfair they are: she gives the example of one company “submitting more than 10,000 pages of documents with data concerning its personnel to challenge the allegations of forced labour” but even that “was deemed insufficient”.
On legality, she writes that “unilateral targeted sanctions as a punitive action violate, at the very least, obligations arising from universal and regional human rights instruments, many of which have a peremptory character, including procedural guarantees, the presumption of innocence, due process, access to justice and right to remedy.”
Specifically when it comes to the sanctions related to Xinjiang, she writes that they are based on the principle of “presumption of guilt” (i.e. assuming that a person is guilty of a crime until proven innocent) which “violate fundamental principles of international law, provisions of the UN General Assembly and UN Human Rights Council resolutions, and constitute an attempt to supplement the legal standards with a so-called ‘rule-based order'”.
Her conclusion is that “unilateral sanctions against China, Chinese companies or individuals neither conform with international law nor correspond to the criteria of collective countermeasures of art. 48(1b) of the Draft articles on responsibility of states for internationally wrongful acts and constitute therefore unilateral coercive measures. In view of the illegality of primary sanctions, means of their enforcement including secondary sanctions, civil and criminal charges for (alleged) circumvention of sanctions regimes are equally illegal.”
In terms of impact, she says the sanctions “have negative humanitarian impact on labour and social rights of individuals from the industries affected by unilateral sanctions or designated companies, their right to decent life and freedom from poverty, as well as right to education, right to benefit from the outcomes of academic research, prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of nationality or ethnic origin, and access to justice. They also affect exterritorialy third country workers of the Chinese companies, branches and affiliated companies in China and abroad, markets of developing countries after the withdrawal of Chinese companies and investments, or people dependent on humanitarian and development assistance from China including via the Belt and Road initiative, Confucius institutes and other initiatives.”
For Xinjiang in particular, she says the sanctions are particularly egregious because they “introduce the presumption of guilty (high risk) of existence of any nexus to Xinjiang at any stage of supply chain”, which “affects the overall economy of the region” and “consequently result in rising unemployment, particularly affecting the most vulnerable, […] undermines development [and] rises risks of poverty”.
She is “seriously concerned” about the “presumption of guilt of entities and individuals under sanctions” because it “shifts burden of proof of legality of their activity to the individuals/entities under sanctions”. She says this violates “the presumption of innocence being a peremptory norm of international law”.
She also interestingly “recalls that eradication of poverty and enabling the decent life for people constitutes an inalienable element of suppression of international terrorism in accordance with the UN Global counter-terrorism strategy, that is especially important in a view of the series of terrorist attacks taken place in China and especially in Xinjiang region before 2016.” Suggesting therefore that many of the Chinese government programs introduced after 2016 to alleviate poverty and counter-terrorism were misrepresented by the West. It is often these very programs that were given as an excuse for enacting the sanctions.
Her final recommendation is to “call on sanctioning parties to lift and suspend all unilateral sanctions applied to China, Chinese nationals and companies without authorization of the UN Security Council, and the use of which cannot be justified as normal business activity in the form of retortions or countermeasures in accordance with international law. No good intentions, or references to the need to protect national foreign, economic or technology interests can be used as grounds for or justification of unilateral sanctions, as contrary to international law and ultimately resulting in human rights violations.”
These are thoughts by Arnaud Bertrand as posted on X
