Three years after the UN’s 2022 report flagged possible crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, accountability remains absent. The region’s repression is no longer only a humanitarian tragedy; it is entangled with global supply chains, the Belt and Road Initiative, and India’s own security environment.
A reckoning deferred
On August 31, 2022, the Office of the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a landmark assessment of the situation in Xinjiang. It concluded that large-scale arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence, and coercive birth control “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.” The report was damning, based on survivor testimony, satellite imagery, and official documents.
Yet three years on, Beijing has provided no redress. Detainees’ families remain cut off, international investigators are denied access, and official narratives insist that “vocational training centres” have been closed. In October 2022, when the UN Human Rights Council narrowly rejected a motion to even hold a debate on Xinjiang by a vote of 19–17, the door to multilateral scrutiny was effectively closed. For the victims, justice has stalled in diplomatic deadlock.
Camps, labour, and silence
Reports from exile communities and rights groups suggest that arbitrary detention has been only one facet of repression. Uyghur and Kazakh workers have been funnelled through “labour transfer” schemes into textile, solar, and electronics factories across China. This system, documented through corporate records and government contracts, ties human rights abuses to global commerce.
The United States responded with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), presuming goods from Xinjiang are tainted unless proven otherwise. Since 2022, thousands of shipments have been detained at American ports, from cotton to polysilicon used in solar panels. For Indian firms that source intermediate goods through Chinese suppliers, this creates a direct risk of sanctions exposure. What began as a human rights scandal has become a compliance and reputational challenge for Asian businesses linked to Xinjiang.
The geography of control
Xinjiang is often imagined as a far-off frontier, but for India it is uncomfortably close. The region is the starting point of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative. From Kashgar, roads and pipelines run south through Gilgit-Baltistan to Gwadar on the Arabian Sea—territory India claims as its own.
This makes Xinjiang not just a domestic governance issue for China, but a linchpin of regional geopolitics. Infrastructure consolidation in Xinjiang strengthens China’s Western Theatre Command, which faces India across the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The same repression that subdues Uyghur identity also underwrites Beijing’s capacity to project power into South Asia.
Indian security planners worry about two spillovers:
- First, repression in Xinjiang could fuel radicalisation, with extremist groups invoking Uyghur grievances to attract recruits.
- Second, PLA control over the region bolsters China’s logistics and military preparedness opposite Ladakh. In both respects, Xinjiang is a factor in India’s strategic calculus.
The nuclear shadow
For many in Xinjiang, suffering began long before the mass detentions of recent years. From 1964 to 1996, China conducted 45 nuclear tests at Lop Nur, deep inside the region. Entire communities were displaced, agricultural land poisoned, and radiation exposure left intergenerational scars. Uyghur activists describe cancer clusters and birth defects in villages downwind of the test sites, stories largely absent from Chinese official records.
For Beijing, Lop Nur symbolised technological prestige and national strength. For the Uyghurs, it was a bitter reminder that their land and lives were expendable in the pursuit of state power. The contrast with India’s nuclear policy is stark: New Delhi has limited its tests, declared a doctrine of No First Use, and sought legitimacy through restraint. China’s nuclear path, by contrast, imposed profound human costs on a marginalised population.
Diplomacy, deflection, denial
Beijing’s response to international pressure has followed a predictable script: sovereignty invoked as a shield, global allies mobilised to blunt criticism, and counter-narratives promoted through state media. At the UNHRC, Belt and Road partners rallied to defeat the Xinjiang debate motion, reflecting the reach of Chinese influence. In the Muslim world, reactions have been muted. Governments from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan have prioritised economic ties with Beijing over advocacy for fellow Muslims.
This silence underscores Beijing’s success in reframing Xinjiang as a domestic matter. Yet it also highlights the limits of international mechanisms in the face of a determined great power. Unlike smaller states accused of atrocities, China has the diplomatic heft to outmanoeuvre accountability.
India’s balancing act
New Delhi has walked a cautious line. It has not joined Western sanctions regimes, nor has it publicly condemned Beijing at the UN. Yet within India’s strategic community, Xinjiang is recognised as more than a human rights tragedy. It is where repression at home intersects with China’s external assertiveness—along the LAC, through CPEC, and across the wider Indo-Pacific.
India’s position reflects both principle and pragmatism. It has an interest in upholding human rights norms, especially when authoritarian repression risks fuelling instability. But it must also navigate a tense border and avoid open confrontation at international forums where its leverage is limited. For now, Xinjiang is noted in Indian security assessments rather than shouted from its diplomacy.
Collateral to power
As China marks the 76th anniversary of its founding on 1 October 2025, official speeches will celebrate national rejuvenation, prosperity, and strength. Yet the reality in Xinjiang tells a different story: entire communities stripped of identity, dignity, and in some cases, health itself.
Beijing treats Xinjiang as an insurance policy against separatism and unrest. But the premium is extracted from its own citizens, whose suffering is denied, minimised, or exported through supply chains. For India, this is not a distant injustice. It is a security issue, a trade risk, and a geopolitical challenge on its doorstep.
The world may avert its gaze, but Xinjiang remains both a moral and strategic test. The reckoning is only deferred—not erased.