GENEVA, Switzerland — The
UN human rights chief said Tuesday she would make a long-delayed
visit to China in May, including to Xinjiang, where Western lawmakers have
accused Beijing of genocide.
اضافة اعلان
“I am pleased to
announce that we have recently reached an agreement with the government of
China for a visit,” Michelle Bachelet told the UN Human Rights Council.
She said that the
UN rights agency, OHCHR, and Beijing had “initiated concrete preparations for a
visit that is foreseen to take place in May.”
Nearly 200 rights
groups meanwhile demanded Tuesday that Bachelet’s office release its
long-postponed report on the rights situation in Xinjiang.
“The release of the
report without further delay is essential — to send a message to victims and
perpetrators alike that no state, no matter how powerful, is above
international law or the robust independent scrutiny of your office,” the 192
groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty, wrote in an open letter.
There have long
been calls for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit
Xinjiang and
to publish her office’s findings on the situation there.
Rights groups say
that at least one million mostly
Muslim minorities have been incarcerated in
“re-education camps” in Xinjiang, a far-western region where China is accused
of widespread human rights abuses including forced sterilizations of women and
forced labor.
The US government
and lawmakers in five other Western countries have declared China’s treatment
of the
Uyghurs in Xinjiang a “genocide” — a charge denied by Beijing.
China says it is
running vocational training centers in the region designed to counter
extremism.
‘Unfettered access’
The Chinese government has for years said that Bachelet was welcome to
visit Xinjiang, but an agreement on her demand for “meaningful and unfettered
access” has until now appeared elusive.
On the sidelines of
the
Winter Olympics, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told leaders in
Beijing last month that he expected them to allow Bachelet to make a “credible”
visit to China, including to Xinjiang.
And on Tuesday,
Bachelet said an agreement had been reached.
“Preparations will
have to take into account COVID-19 regulations,” she told the rights council.
“The government has also accepted the visit of an
advanced OHCHR team to prepare my stay in China, including on-site visits to
Xinjiang and other places,” she said.
“This team will
depart to China next month.”
Bachelet’s
spokeswoman
Elizabeth Throssell confirmed to reporters that the high
commissioner would visit the region.
“I can confirm that
both the advanced team and the High Commissioner will go or are due to go to
Xinjiang, and obviously visit Beijing and other locations,” she said.
Throssell said
negotiations had produced “an agreement on the parameters that respect our
methodology,” including “unfettered access to a broad range of actors,
including civil society.”
‘Positive development’
Diplomats in Geneva hailed the news of Bachelet’s visit.
“We welcome any
effort to shed light on the systemic violations of human rights in Xinjiang,”
said British Ambassador Simon Manley. “We look forward to her report into the
situation.”
The French mission
in
Geneva also welcomed the announced visit as “a positive development.”
It stressed though
that the visit “must not obscure the urgency of publishing the report” on the
rights situation in Xinjiang.
Neither Bachelet
nor Throssell provided an update on when the report would emerge.
Observers in Geneva
suggest it has been ready since last August.
An OHCHR spokesman
had suggested in December that the report would be published within a few
weeks, but it still remains unclear when it will be made public.
In their open
letter Tuesday, the rights groups questioned why it was taking so long,
pointing out that many of them had already documented abuses in Xinjiang. It
said these included “systematic state-organized mass detention, torture,
persecution, and other violations of a scale and nature amounting to crimes
against humanity.”
“We have repeatedly
raised alarm, including to your office, over the extreme measures taken by
Chinese authorities since 2017,” they wrote.
They said they
“have been concerned by the relative silence of your office in the face of
these grave violations.”
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