China concerned as UN human rights chief visits Xinjiang region

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, who began a six-day official mission to China, has visited remote Xinjiang region, which is home to millions of Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims, who have been subjected to a Chinese government campaign of cultural, linguistic and social control and acts of oppression that governments including the US have termed a genocide. 

This has seriously worried the Chinese Government while the six-day tour has also been dogged by concerns from Western officials, diplomats and rights groups that the Communist Party will attempt to use it to whitewash abuses.

However, China vehemently denies the allegations, calling them the "lie of the century". 
The tour by Michelle Bachelet, which was at the invitation of the Government, marks the first by the UN’s top rights official to China since 2005.
“I have been committed to undertaking this visit, the first visit by a UN Human Rights High Commissioner to China in 17 years, because for me, it is a priority to engage with the Government of China directly…on human rights issues, domestic, regional and global,” Ms. Bachelet said, in comments shared by her Office, OHCHR.

She added: “For development, peace and security to be sustainable – locally and across borders – human rights have to be at the core.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping has held a video call with UN rights Chief Michelle Bachelet on Wednesday, as she visits Xinjiang during a mission overshadowed by fresh allegations of Uyghur abuses and fears she is being used as a public relations tool by the Communist Party.
In opening remarks to President Xi, the UN rights chief stressed that China had “a crucial role to play within multilateral institutions in confronting many of the challenges facing the world currently”, comments echoed in an address to students at Guangzhou University.

These challenges included “threats to international peace and security, instability in the global economic system, inequality, climate change and more”, Ms. Bachelet explained, adding that she looked forward “to deepening our discussions on these and other issues”.

As with other countries, the High Commissioner also offered China technical assistance to “accompany efforts to strengthen the promotion and protection of human rights, justice and the rule of law for all without exception”.

The development came as Ms. Bachelet prepared to visit the western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on Wednesday, where UN-appointed independent rights experts have raised serious concerns about the alleged detention and forced labour of Muslim Uyghurs.

However, China has categorically denied the allegations over its treatment of the Uyghur minority, hundreds of thousands of whom who have been reportedly held in so-called re-education” facilities or forcibly transferred to factories in Xinjiang or other Chinese provinces.
Meanwhile, The United States has reiterated its view that Bachelet's visit was a mistake after the release of thousands of leaked documents and photographs from inside the system of mass incarceration this week.

But Xi defended his country's human rights progress during the call while Xinjiang was not specifically mentioned by either side, according to a readout from state broadcaster CCTV.
"Human rights issues should also not be politicised, instrumentalised, or treated with double standards," Xi said according to a CCTV readout, adding that China has "a human rights development path that... suits its national conditions".

CCTV reported Xi as telling Bachelet that there is no "ideal nation" on human rights.Meanwhile, Britain and Germany also voiced outrage, with UK foreign secretary Liz Truss calling for China to grant Bachelet "full and unfettered access to the region" and her German counterpart urging a "transparent investigation".

Furthermore, foreign officials have raised questions over what Bachelet’s visit can realistically achieve, and there is concern that the Chinese government will use the trip to whitewash its human rights record. So far the visit has included Bachelet receiving a gift of the book Xi Jinping on Respecting and Protecting Human Rights, and she has been photographed bumping elbows with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi. The US has called the visit a mistake.
Xi’s comments to Bachelet on Wednesday underscored the deep sensitivity in China’s government to criticism of its human rights record. It has long denied claims and evidence of its abuses against Uyghurs, saying it is conducting anti-terrorism and poverty-eradication programmes in Xinjiang. At first, Beijing denied the existence of detention camps, before describing them as vocational training centres.

About Uyghurs

The Uyghurs are a Turkic people who mostly live in Xinjiang, a province in China’s far northwestern frontier. They are culturally, ethnically and linguistically distinct from the Han Chinese, who are the majority ethnic group within China.

Most Uyghurs practise Sufism, described as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. They claim Xinjiang as their historical homeland, but the Chinese government asserts that the Han had settled Xinjiang before the Uyghurs arrived. They claim Xinjiang as an indisputable part of the Chinese polity. It is considered by many to be China’s most restive province.

Uyghurs and western human rights organisations claim that the unrest stems from Beijing’s oppressive policies against the Uyghur people.

Beijing asserts that its policies are beneficial to the province’s development and that the unrest is a product of influence from abroad, citing Islamic radical elements within Pakistan and Afghanistan.