The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, announced on Tuesday an agreement with the Government of China to visit that country, a trip that would include the Xinjiang region (northwest), where it is feared that hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been held in internment camps since 2017.
“My office and the Government of China have started specific work for the visit, which is expected in principle for next May,” Bachelet stressed in her speech before the Council of United Nations Human Rights to review the situation of fundamental freedoms in the world.
Human rights groups and numerous governments have condemned China’s practices against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, where in the last five years it is believed that up to 1.8 million people may have been held in what Beijing calls “vocational training centers.”
While critics of Beijing’s policies consider them one of the worst cases of arbitrary detention since the end of World War II, China defends them as part of a plan for the socioeconomic improvement of Xinjiang, a region hit in the past decade by several attacks. jihadist terrorists.
The denunciations of human rights violations by the Chinese communist regime against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang led several countries, including the United States, to promote a diplomatic boycott of the recent Beijing Winter Olympicsand that they previously imposed sanctions against China.
Bachelet indicated that her visit will be carried out taking into account the COVID-19 prevention regulations, and explained that a mission from the UN Office for Human Rights that she directs will travel in April to advance preparations.
The High Commissioner also stated in her speech to the Council today that she remains concerned about the mistreatment of human rights activists in China.
“Some of them have suffered restrictions on their movements, for example through house arrest, and in certain cases they have received prison sentences,” the former Chilean president denounced.
After announcing her trip to China, nearly 200 organizations expressed through a statement their fear that Bachelet will suffer restrictions during her stay in the Asian country that prevent her from knowing the serious human rights violations in Xinjiang and other parts of the country.
That visit, they added, is not an excuse for the office led by Bachelet to continue delaying the publication of its report on the human rights violations suffered by the Uyghurs, which the High Commissioner herself confirmed was being finalized in September 2021.
According to these organizations, Bachelet has avoided condemning China’s actions in her Xinjiang region before the Human Rights Council (of which the Chinese Government is currently a member) since 2018. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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