CHRD Submits Follow-up Report to UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

April 1, 2025 Comments Off

Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD)

Follow-Up Report Submitted to

UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR)

Civil Society Assessment of China’s Implementation of Recommendations in

Concluding Observations (E/C.12/CHN/CO/3) on the third periodic report of China, including Hong Kong, China, and Macao, China

Submission Date: April 1, 2025

In its March 2023 concluding observations of its third periodic review of China, the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights asked the government for information on progress towards fulfilling four recommendations. Those recommendations were meant to have been fulfilled by March 2025. CHRD’s analysis of Beijing’s efforts follows below, finding little to suggest the authorities are acting to comply with its obligations under the treaty and the review process.

(I) Para. 34: The Committee recommends that the State party adopt comprehensive anti-discrimination legislative, political and administrative measures prohibiting direct, indirect and multiple discrimination and harassment, and that it consider criminalizing hate speech and hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons in accordance with article 2 (2) of the Covenant and taking into account the Committee’s general comment No. 20 (2009) on non-discrimination in economic, social and cultural rights.

CHRD finds no evidence to suggest the Chinese government made any progress towards implementing these recommendations. In fact, it continues to tolerate and in some respects exacerbate discrimination. That abuse remains prevalent, including discrimination against women, rural migrants, persons with disabilities, and LGBTIQ+ individuals,[1] yet there is no movement towards any anti-discrimination legislation, including in the context of employment.

Just two months after the CESCR Committee issued these concluding observations, Beijing authorities pressured a well-known support center for LGBTIQ+ people to close, indicating hostility to this community across the country.[2] Censorship of social media posts regarding LGBTIQ+ identity continue to be regularly censored.[3] The Chinese government has also failed to vigorously implement the anti-domestic violence law, and has taken no meaningful steps to end institutionalized discrimination against people from rural areas.[4]

(II) Para. 36. The Committee urges the State party to immediately bring to an end the violations of human rights in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The Committee also urges the State party, in line with decision 1 adopted by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination at its 108^th session, under the early warning and urgent action procedure, to effectively implement the concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Committee against Torture, as well as the recommendations included in paragraph 151 of the OHCHR assessment of human rights concerns in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

CHRD has found that the Chinese government has not only failed to implement any of these recommendations but also continues to deny it is committing human rights abuses while deepening repression across the Uyghur region. In March 2024, regional Chinese Communist Party Secretary Ma Xingrui asserted that Islam must be “Sinicized,” reflecting the government’s intent to continue restricting religious freedom.[5] In January 2025, Kashgar authorities announced a 17-year sentence against a woman for teaching her children Koran verses; the sons were handed seven- and ten-year sentences for receiving what authorities claimed was “illegal education.”[6] There have been no mass releases of those arbitrarily detained, and authorities instead have sought to prosecute protected behavior through formal legal proceedings while denying fair trial rights, yielding harsh sentences and grossly disproportionate imprisonment for Uyghurs relative to the overall population.[7] An estimated half a million people from Turkic minorities are in prison or pre-trial detention in the Uyghur region, according to a February 2025 report.[8] Chinese authorities also continue to deny access to the region for Uyghurs outside the country trying to locate missing family members, yet may allow visits or phone calls for those who agree to spy on and share information on diaspora communities in their countries of residence.[9] Beijing blocks visits by independent international human rights investigators who might offer critical assessments, but allows visits for diplomats, journalists, tourists, and United Nations human rights experts who will offer only positive views of the region.[10]

(III) Para. 89. The Committee reiterates its recommendation that the State party take all necessary measures to ensure the full and unrestricted enjoyment by peoples and minorities of their right to enjoy fully their own cultural identity and take part in cultural life, to ensure the use and practice of their language and culture, and to abolish immediately the coerced residential (boarding) school system imposed on Tibetan children and allow private Tibetan schools to be established. The Committee also recommends that the State party ensure that Mandarin is not the only language of instruction allowed for ethnic minorities and peoples.

CHRD has found no evidence that Beijing is implementing these recommendations. Credible international research organizations and media outlets continue to report not only on the expansion of such boarding schools for Tibetan children,[11] but also on physical and psychological abuse taking place in those schools.[12] Mandarin is overwhelmingly the language of instruction in these institutions, presenting a grave threat to Tibetan identity and undermining the best practices as articulated repeatedly by the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

(IV) Para. 103. The Committee recommends that Hong Kong, China, immediately provide all due process guarantees to human rights defenders, civil society actors, journalists, lawyers working on human rights and others working to defend economic, social and cultural rights, including access to independent and effective legal representation at every stage of the proceedings. The Committee urges Hong Kong, China, to cooperate with the State party to review the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (2020) to that end. The Committee also recommends the abolition of the national security hotline. The Committee refers Hong Kong, China, to its statement on human rights defenders and economic, social and cultural rights.

CHRD finds no evidence of positive compliance on these matters. The government has not repealed the 2020 Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region nor brought it into conformity with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as suggested by UN human rights experts. Instead, authorities have adopted additional human rights-violating legislation, most notably the March 2024 Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (SNSO) which the High Commissioner for Human Rights decried as “regressive step for human rights.”[13] The SNSO further weakens due process rights and the right to a fair trial. Hundreds of people have now been prosecuted under these two laws.[14] In September 2024, the first verdicts were handed down under the SNSO; defendants received 14- and 10-month sentences for wearing a t-shirt or writing words that authorities deemed “seditious.”[15] Several wrongfully detained human rights defenders, including publisher Jimmy Lai and lawyer Albert Ho, are reportedly in poor health in detention.[16] Lai, who spends 23 hours a day in solitary detention, has been deemed by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention as unlawfully detained.[17] In October 2023, four UN human rights experts expressed concerns about fair trial rights in Hong Kong’s prosecution of 47 pro-democracy activists and OHCHR expressed grave concerns when 45 of those individuals were convicted and sentenced to prison in November 2024.[18] Hong Kong authorities have continued to ignore these concerns, and in December 2024 used provisions under the NSL and SNSO to issue arrest warrants and bounties for human rights defenders abroad and cancelled the passports of some pro-democracy figures who have fled to other countries.[19] The government has not abolished the Hong Kong Police Force’s national security hotline.[20] In February and March 2025, Hong Kong activists in the UK and Australia were targeted with leaflets handed out to their neighbors that offered rewards for their capture and included contact information for Hong Kong police, an indication that efforts to intimidate activists through such channels has worsened.[21]

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/chinese/2023-10-19/chinese-gov-claims-lgbtq-people-are-protected-from-discriminatio/102998088

[2] https://apnews.com/article/china-beijing-lgbt-center-shutdown-a5643c680e1faf5c8a7a7d9bdd627d6f; https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/renquanfazhi/sh-01242024101245.html

[3] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-11-14/china-queer-influencers-lgbtq-censorship

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/jan/15/its-difficult-to-survive-chinas-lgbtq-advocates-face-jail-and-forced-confession

[5] https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/top-official-from-chinas-xinjiang-says-sinicisation-of-islam-inevitable

[6] https://www.rfa.org/english/uyghur/2025/01/10/woman-sentenced-teaching-islam/

[7] https://macmillan.yale.edu/gsp/publications/uyghur-race-enemy-chinas-legalized-authoritarian-oppression-mass-imprisonment

[8] https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/china/report-eight-years-on-chinas-repression-of-the-uyghurs-remains-dire

[9] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-66337328

[10] https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/ucm/statements/20240517-eom-statement-sr-ucm-china.pdf

[11] https://apnews.com/article/tibet-china-boarding-schools-6881277c7f22dd97a2e3459067756297; https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2024/07/02/why-are-so-many-tibetan-children-in-state-run-boarding-schools

[12] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/01/09/world/asia/tibet-china-boarding-schools.html; https://actions.tibetnetwork.org/node/696