(Geneva) A few hours before her departure, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is due to publish her long-awaited report on human rights violations in China’s Xinjiang region on Wednesday, despite the enormous all-out pressure from Beijing.
Posted at 3:16 p.m.
“The report will be published by the end of the day,” said Jeremy Laurence, spokesperson for High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet.
The former Chilean president, for whom it is the last day at the head of the High Commission after a four-year mandate, is thus keeping her promise to publish this highly anticipated document before her departure.
” Better late than never. It will be a decisive moment,” said Sophie Richardson, director of the NGO Human Rights Watch for China, believing that it will show “that no state is above the law”.
More than the content, it is the existence and the publication that are important in his eyes, because that will oblige the United Nations Human Rights Council to take up the case. “Not prosecuting is not an option,” she stressed.
On the other hand, China kept repeating all the bad things it thought of the document. At the UN in New York, Chinese Ambassador Zhang Jun reaffirmed on Wednesday “to be firmly opposed to the report”.
“The so-called Xinjiang problem is a totally fabricated and politically motivated lie” that is holding back China’s development, he said, accusing Mr.me Bachelet to “meddle in Chinese internal affairs”.
Also in New York, the spokesman for the UN chief, Stéphane Dujarric, indicated that Antonio Guterres had not read the report or participated in its drafting.
“He does not want to interfere in his work or influence him, whether it is Michelle Bachelet or any other person who will occupy this position”, declared Mr. Dujarric, in the face of press criticism on this publication of last minute of a reference document.
Genocide
The content of the report is a well-kept secret of which nothing has leaked for the moment and whose content and the terms chosen will be dissected.
The US government accuses Beijing of “genocide” in Xinjiang. In January, the French National Assembly, following in the footsteps of the representation of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and even Canada, had also qualified as “genocide” the treatment of the Uyghurs by China.
Xinjiang and other provinces of China have been hit for several decades, and in particular from 2009 to 2014, by attacks attributed to Islamists or Uyghur separatists.
For several years now, the region has been the subject of intense surveillance: ubiquitous cameras, security gates in buildings, armed forces very visible in the streets, restrictions on the issuance of passports, etc.
Western studies, based on interpretations of official documents, testimonies of alleged victims and statistical extrapolations, accuse Beijing of having interned in “camps” at least a million people, mostly Uyghurs, of carrying out sterilizations and abortions “forced”, or to impose “forced labour”.
China denies these accusations. She refutes any idea of ”forced sterilization”, but concedes to apply in Xinjiang, as everywhere else in the country, her policy of limiting births, for a long time implemented with laxity in the region.
Beijing also presents the “camps” as “vocational training centers” intended to distance the inhabitants from religious extremism, and which would now be closed, because all the “students” would have “completed their training”.
intense pressure
Last week during his farewell press conference, Mme Bachelet admitted to facing intense pressure both from countries in favor of the publication of the report – including the United States – and from those opposed to it – in the first place the Chinese authorities.
At a Human Rights Council ceremony to mark the end of Chile’s former president’s term on Tuesday, British human rights ambassador Rita French and rights organizations were alarmed the report has not yet come out.
“It is essential for all of us that no state be exempted from careful and objective scrutiny of its human rights record, and that no state be allowed to stifle the independent voice of the High Commissioner,” said Mr.me English.