The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights began a visit to China on Monday focusing on the treatment of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, amid fears that Beijing is restricting their freedom of movement.
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After several years of tough negotiations with the Chinese authorities, Michelle Bachelet, 70-year-old former Chilean president, must stay six days in the country, until Saturday.
She spoke on Monday by videoconference with the heads of delegations of around 70 foreign embassies in China, diplomatic sources told AFP.
According to these sources, Michelle Bachelet assured diplomats that she had negotiated access to detention centers and could speak with local human rights activists.
The UN had been scrapping since 2018 with Beijing in order to obtain “free and meaningful access” to Xinjiang (northwest China).
This region has long been hit by attacks for which the authorities accuse separatists and Uyghur Islamists. For several years now, it has been the subject of a drastic surveillance policy carried out in the name of anti-terrorism.
Studies accuse China of having interned at least a million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities in re-education camps, and even of imposing forced labor. Beijing denies these accusations.
Ms. Bachelet’s visit is the first by a High Commissioner for Human Rights to China since 2005.
She must go in particular to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, as well as Kashgar, a city in the south of the region where the Uighur population is particularly large.
” Closed circuit “
Michelle Bachelet will meet “a number of senior officials at national and local levels”, “civil society organizations, representatives of the business world as well as academics”, assured her cabinet.
Due to the epidemic, the visit will take place in a “closed circuit”, that is to say in a health bubble, Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for Chinese diplomacy, told the press on Monday.
For the same reason, the High Commission and China “decided after discussion” not to include journalists in the delegation, he said.
This stay is however closely scrutinized, many fearing that China will use this visit to clear itself of the accusations of which it is the subject.
The Washington-based human rights organization Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) said on Monday that its visit would be “carefully managed and choreographed” by Beijing.
“We fear (…) that you do not have free access to victims, witnesses, independent members of civil society” and that “your points of view are distorted by the Chinese government”, underlines the NGO .
The United States, which accuses China of “genocide” and criticizes Mme Bachelet for his “persistent silence” in the face of “atrocities”, said they were “concerned” by this visit.
“We do not expect the People’s Republic of China to guarantee the access necessary to conduct a full and candid assessment of the human rights situation in Xinjiang,” Washington said last week.
Fear of reprisals
Mainly Muslims, the Uighurs are the main ethnic group in Xinjiang, with a population of 26 million.
Western studies, based on interpretations of official documents, testimonies of presumed victims and statistical extrapolations, accuse Beijing of having interned at least a million people in “camps”, of carrying out “forced” sterilizations or even to impose “forced labour”.
China presents the camps as “vocational training centers” intended to combat religious extremism and to train residents in a trade in order to ensure social stability.
Beijing says it does not impose any sterilization, but only applies the birth control policy in place across the country, which was previously little practiced in the region.
According to scholars and Uyghurs based abroad, however, Xinjiang authorities appear to have abandoned harsh crackdowns to focus on economic development.
“Now there is not much visible evidence of a repression,” Peter Irwin of the Uyghur Human Rights Project told AFP.
Fear of reprisals could also prevent Uyghurs from speaking freely to the UN team, according to human rights associations.