Departing UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has excoriated Beijing for "serious human rights violations" and possible "crimes against humanity" in a western region where China's leadership is accused of mass roundups and other mistreatment of Uyghurs and other minorities, despite Beijing's strong-arm tactics to block the assessment.
Bachelet's report suggests that the discriminatory detention of Muslim groups in Xinjiang Province might constitute crimes against humanity and calls on China to "take prompt steps" to release all of those detainees in so-called training centers, prisons, or detention facilities.
It cites a "discriminatory pattern" and "patterns of torture" allegations in Xinjiang as "credible" and says the situation requires "urgent" international attention.
"The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups, pursuant to law and policy, in context of restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity," the report said.
Chinese officials' treatment of Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang Province, where more than 1 million Uyghurs have been forced into a network of detention camps, has been labeled genocide by the United States and harshly condemned by dozens of other countries, including at the United Nations in October.
August 31 was Bachelet's last day on the job and she vowed months ago to release the conclusions from her trip to the Xinjiang region in May before she left.
SEE ALSO: A Xinjiang Potemkin? UN Human Rights Chief's China Visit Draws CriticismChinese Ambassador Zhang Jun warned earlier in the day that Beijing was "firmly opposed" to the release of the document and had made its opposition "very clear" to Bachelet.
He acknowledged that Chinese officials "haven’t seen this report yet, but we are completely opposed to such a report [and] we do not think it will produce any good to anyone."
Bachelet recently said she was under "tremendous pressure" from both sides regarding the report, which UN officials and Western diplomats say has been mostly ready for months.
Its publication with the weight of the United Nations behind it marks a big blow to Beijing.
Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group mainly originating from and culturally affiliated with the Central and East Asian regions.
UN special rapporteur on modern slavery Tomoya Obokata this month concluded that China's coercing of Muslim Uyghurs and other minorities into forced labor in agriculture and manufacturing in Xinjiang could amount to "enslavement as a crime against humanity."
Chinese envoy Zhang called "the so-called Xinjiang issue...a completely fabricated lie out of political motivations" whose "purpose is definitely to undermine China’s stability and to obstruct China’s development."
Human rights groups and journalists have long documented shocking abuses in Xinjiang.
Beijing calls the detention facilities "training centers."
Family members and rights advocates previously expressed bitter disappointment at the failure of Bachelet, a former political detainee in Pinochet's Chile, a doctor for tortured children, and a one-term president, to more squarely confront China on the Xinjiang abuses.
It is unclear who will succeed Bachelet as top UN rights advocate but she will initially be replaced by a deputy, a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said this week.
"We are looking for somebody who is willing to speak out in a principled way, regardless of the perpetrator," Human Rights Watch head Kenneth Roth said of the appointment.