(United Nations) United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expects China to allow UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet a “credible” visit to Xinjiang, said the United Nations on Saturday.
Posted at 3:26 p.m.
Mr. Guterres, who met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Olympics in Beijing according to a statement, “expressed his expectation that contacts between the services” of Mr.me Bachelet and the Chinese authorities “allow a credible visit by the High Commissioner to China, including Xinjiang”, where Beijing is accused of human rights violations against the Muslim Uyghur minority.
The report of the meeting published by the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua made no mention of human rights and Xinjiang.
Michelle Bachelet, who intends to publish a report on Xinjiang eagerly awaited by Westerners and NGOs, has for years been asking Beijing for “meaningful and unhindered access” to this region, but no such visit has gone until present been possible.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at the end of January that Beijing was “willing” for the High Commissioner to come to China and Xinjiang. But Beijing refuses any idea of a UN investigation in Xinjiang and believes that any visit to the region must be “friendly”.
Several Western countries, including the United States, France and the United Kingdom, have denounced an ongoing “genocide” against the Uyghurs.
According to human rights organizations, at least a million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities, mainly Muslims, are or have been incarcerated in camps in this region of northwestern China, placed under close surveillance by the authorities.
Beijing disputes, saying that they are vocational training centers intended to keep them away from terrorism and separatism, after numerous deadly attacks attributed to Islamists or Uyghur separatists.