UN rights envoy defends contentious China visit

BEIJING (AFP) May28, 2022-The UN rights envoy on Saturday said her contentious visit to China was “not an investigation”, and insisted she had unsupervised access during meetings in Xinjiang, where Beijing is accused of widespread human rights abuses.   

Michelle Bachelet’s long-planned trip this week has taken her to the far-western region, where Beijing is accused of the detention of over a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, forced sterilisation of women and coerced labour.   

Bachelet has come under fire from rights groups and Uyghurs overseas, who say she has stumbled into a six-day Communist Party propaganda tour, including a meeting with President Xi Jinping in which state media suggested she supported China’s vision of human rights.   Her office later clarified that her remarks did not contain a direct endorsement of China’s rights record.   

Speaking at the end of her trip while still inside China, Bachelet framed her visit as a chance for her to speak with “candour” to Chinese authorities as well as civil society groups and academics.   

 “This visit was not an investigation,” she told reporters, later insisting she had “unsupervised” access to sources the UN had arranged to meet in Xinjiang.   

It is the first trip to China by the UN’s top rights envoy in 17 years and comes after painstaking negotiations over the conditions of her visit, which the UN says is neither a fact-finding mission nor a probe.