China is accused of condoning ‘highest level’ abuses against Muslim Uyghur minority after new press reports of crackdown in Xinjiang, as UN human rights chief begins visit to China on Tuesday region.
A consortium of 14 foreign media outlets on Tuesday published documents they say came from hacking into police computers in Xinjiang, a region in northwest China.
These shed a harsh light on the situation of Uyghur Muslims. Among them are thousands of photographs presented as having been taken in “detention camps” and showing the faces of many “detainees”, including women, minors and the elderly.
Written documents support the idea of an orderly repression from the top of the Chinese state.
These new accusations are “the latest example of the denigration of Xinjiang carried out by anti-Chinese forces”, blasted Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for Chinese diplomacy, on Tuesday.
“We are appalled by this shocking information and images,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price said of the leaked files attributed to Chinese police.
“It seems very difficult to imagine that systematic action to suppress, to imprison, to wage a campaign of genocide and crimes against humanity would not have the blessing – or the approval – of the highest levels of the government of the People’s Republic of China,” he added.
Washington regularly accuses Beijing of being responsible for “genocide” in Xinjiang. China denounces the “lie of the century” and presents the camps as “vocational training centers” intended to combat religious extremism.
“Clarifications”
The head of German diplomacy, Annalena Baerbock, “demanded clarifications” during an interview with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.
The revelations come as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet begins a long-awaited visit to China’s Xinjiang region, following recurring accusations against Beijing of fiercely repressing Uyghur Muslims.
This trip is being done discreetly for the time being, the UN delegation being required to integrate, in the name of the epidemic situation in China, a health bubble which keeps it away from the foreign press.
No details on the precise places where Michelle Bachelet will go have been made public, which raises questions about the latitude she will benefit from in practice on the ground.
Especially since the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi, told him on Monday that he expected above all a visit which could “clarify the disinformation” of which China considers itself a victim.
Worried, Uyghurs in the diaspora and human rights associations have urged the 70-year-old former Chilean president not to be drawn into a communication operation orchestrated by Beijing.
As of Tuesday, the official New China news agency assured that Ms. Bachelet, in front of Wang Yi, had “congratulated China for its important achievements in economic and social development and the promotion of the protection of human rights”. .
Remarks that the spokesperson for Ms. Bachelet has neither confirmed nor denied.
Xinjiang, long hit by bloody attacks attributed to separatists and Uyghur Islamists, has been the subject of repression in the name of anti-terrorism for several years.
Western studies accuse China of having interned at least a million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities there in re-education camps, and even of imposing “forced labor” and “forced sterilizations”.
Attacks
Beijing says it does not impose any sterilization, but only applies the birth control policy in place across the country, previously little practiced in the region.
Present Tuesday and Wednesday in Xinjiang, Michelle Bachelet must go to the regional capital Urumqi, scene in the past of several attacks targeting civilians.
Ms. Bachelet will also go to Kashgar, in southern Xinjiang, where the Uyghur population is the majority and the security campaign deemed to be particularly fierce.
Nursimangul Abdureshid, a Uyghur living in Turkey, however, said he had “not much hope” that the UN visitors could “bring any change”.
“They must visit victims, like members of my family, not participate in scenes prepared in advance” by Beijing, she told AFP.
Her brother was sentenced to almost 16 years in prison, in particular for “preparation (of acts) violent and terrorist”, she recently discovered in a file revealed by AFP and reputed to come from a leak of the police records.
“Antichinese”
Michelle Bachelet is the first UN human rights official to visit China since 2005, after years of tough negotiations with Beijing over the terms of her visit.
“Ms. Bachelet must understand that what is at stake is the world’s confidence in the United Nations,” said Raphaël David, of the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR).
According to her services, the former Chilean president will discuss with members of civil society working on human rights.