The United Nations human rights chief has admitted to \u201ctremendous pressure\u201d over a long-delayed report on China\u2019s Xinjiang region, where Beijing stands accused of detaining more than one million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.
Michelle Bachelet has repeatedly said she will publish a report on the rights situation in Xinjiang before her term ends on August 31.
\u201cWe\u2019re trying very hard to do what I promised,\u201d Bachelet said during her final press conference as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Thursday.
However, she added that there was uncertainty over when the report would appear as her office was under \u201ctremendous pressure to publish or not to publish\u201d.
\u201c[We] received substantial input from the government [of China] that we will need to carefully review, as we do every time with any report with any country,\u201d the UN rights chief said.
She received a letter signed by countries including North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba \u201casking for the non-publication\u201d of the report, which has been repeatedly delayed.
Bachelet, whose successor has yet to be announced by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said the enquiries about the report had been non-stop.
\u201cYou cannot imagine the numbers of letters, meetings asking for the publication. Huge amounts,\u201d she said, adding that for the past year the issue came up \u201cevery day, every time, every\u2026 meeting\u201d.
Campaigners accuse China of human rights violations in Xinjiang including mass incarceration, forced labour, compulsory sterilisation, family separation and the destruction of Uighur cultural and religious sites.
The United States and legislators in other Western countries have accused China of committing \u201cgenocide\u201d against the minority groups.
Bachelet completed a long-awaited trip to the Xinjiang region earlier this year that sparked criticism. The US said ahead of her trip that it was \u201cdeeply concerned\u201d that Bachelet had failed to secure guarantees on what she could see. She had previously demanded \u201cunfettered\u201d access to the area.
\u201cWe have no expectation that the PRC will grant the necessary access required to conduct a complete, unmanipulated assessment of the human rights environment in Xinjiang,\u201d US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price told reporters at the time, referring to the People\u2019s Republic of China.
Human Rights Watch Executive Director Ken Roth described the trip as \u201can utter failure\u201d and stressed the need for the UN to release a \u201cstrong\u201d Xinjiang report to \u201cmake up for that disaster and put us back on a path of putting real pressure on China to end its persecution\u201d of the Uighurs.
After Bachelet returned from China, some 47 countries signed a statement asking for \u201cmore detailed observations, including on the restrictions the Chinese authorities imposed on the visit\u201d. Academics specialising in Xinjiang also asked for more details on what had happened.
Beijing vehemently rejects the accusations of a crackdown in Xinjiang, calling them \u201cthe lie of the century\u201d, and has said the Xinjiang camps are vocational training centres designed to counter extremism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United Nations human rights chief has admitted to \u201ctremendous pressure\u201d over a long-delayed report on China\u2019s Xinjiang region…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c102-muslim-minorities"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n