Michelle Bachelet denounces “pressure” for the report on the Uyghurs in China

First modification: 08/26/2022 – 01:09

The OHCHR report on China’s treatment of the Uyghur community has been three years in the making. But its publication, promised for months, is still pending for unknown reasons.

The lack of firm commitments by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, at a press conference held this Thursday, August 25, has fueled criticism from NGOs that defend human rights.

Asked about the delays in the publication of the report, the 70-year-old High Commissioner explained that she needed more time to integrate the observations she made during her visit to the People’s Republic of China last May, but also to examine the comments that Beijing made about the report.

Although the procedure allows Bachelet’s office to present an unpublished report for review by the country interested in it, many fear that this allows China to mold the content at will.

“Our concern is that the longer you wait before publishing the report, the more likely it will be covered up,” said Renee Xia, director of the China Human Rights Defenders Network.

An “enormous pressure” to which Bachelet insists that she will not give in

Bachelet tried to sound reassuring, saying she would try to do what she “promised”: publish the report before her term expires on August 31. However, she did not fully confirm that this promise will come true.

And human rights organizations are getting impatient. Sophie Richardson, China director of Human Rights Watch, said Bachelet’s stance was “woefully inadequate” given China’s alleged treatment of Uyghurs. For her part, Michele Taylor, the US human rights ambassador in Geneva, called for the report to be published, saying “the world deserves an independent and honest account” of the situation.

Last month, the Reuters news agency reported that China had asked Bachelet to bury the report in a letter whose authenticity would have been confirmed by diplomats. The former Chilean president, who endured the prison regime and the torture of General Pinochet in the 1970s, confirmed this Thursday that she had received the letter signed by some 40 other states, but assured that her office would not give in to those pressures.

The high commissioner said that at the same time she had had “an enormous number of meetings” with representatives of countries that asked her to publish the report as soon as possible.

“I have been under enormous pressure to publish or not to publish [el documento] but it will not be those pressures that will make us publish it or not,” he said.

The case of the Uyghurs and the alleged violations of their rights by China have discredited Bachelet’s last months in office. For weeks now, the High Commissioner has been the target of criticism, especially from human rights organizations, which accuse her of taking too lax a stance on China, especially since her controversial visit to that country last month May.

At that time, many observers, activists and defenders of the Uyghur cause attacked Bachelet.

The High Commissioner had visited a prison and former internment camp for Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region (one of China’s five autonomous regions and home to 12 million members of the Uyghur Muslim minority), but merely reminded China that “it must fulfill its obligations in accordance with the laws for the protection of human rights.”

At the head of the UN agency since September 2018, the high commissioner ends her mandate at the end of this month. Bachelet will not stand for re-election in September. In fact, no incumbent has served a second term since the position was created in 1993, and the only one to have extended her mandate was Navi Pillay of South Africa, who did so in 2012 for just two years following a specific request from the General Assembly. from the ONU.

China denies all allegations about treatment of Uyghurs

Western countries accuse Beijing of en masse imprisoning Uyghurs, a majority Muslim and Turkic-speaking community in western China, in large labor camps.

According to advocacy groups and the Uyghur diaspora, more than a million Muslims have been detained in Xinjiang since 2017, crammed into “re-education” camps built for those suspected, often arbitrarily, of Islamic radicalization.

The Chinese government denies these accusations and assures that the secret prisons are simply vocational training centers.

EFE, Reuters