US, Advocacy Groups Express Concern Over UN Rights Chief’s Plan to Visit Xinjiang

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet delivers a speech at the opening of a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on Afghanistan in Geneva on Aug. 24, 2021. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

The United Nations’ human rights chief is planning to visit to China in May, including the Xinjiang region, where more than 1 million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities are held in mass detention, leading to concern by the United States and almost 200 rights groups worldwide that a Beijing-surveilled trip would undermine the credibility of any investigation and whitewash the regime’s human rights violations.

Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a video message that she was pleased to announce the visit, which is “foreseen to take place in May.”

“The government has also accepted the visit of an advanced OHCHR [Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights] team to prepare my stay in China, including onsite visits to Xinjiang and other places,” she said, while delivering a global update to the Human Rights Council on March 8.

China’s U.N. Ambassador Chen Xu welcomed the visit—the first by a U.N. human rights chief since 2005—in a statement issued the same day. He also said that “freedom of expression cannot be an excuse for anyone to stand above the law.”

Bachelet’s latest update on China made no mention of the wide-scale repression of Uyghurs in the northwestern region, including forced labor and forced sterilization, which Washington has categorized as genocide and crimes against humanity.

“The High Commissioner cannot allow this visit to amount to a PR victory for the Chinese government,” Omer Kanat, the executive director at Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), said in a March 8 statement.

The Washington-based advocacy group urged Bachelet to proceed with caution on her visit to the Uyghur region.

“[Investigators] must remember that the Chinese government has done everything in its power to promote a story about their treatment of Uyghurs that does not align with basic facts.”

More than 1 million ethnic Muslim minorities are estimated to be detained across a network of internment camps, where they’re subjected to forced labor, torture, and political indoctrination. Beijing, however, calls such detention centers vocational training centers that help with finances and counteract what it deems extremist violence in Xinjiang.

UHRP is far from the only group concerned about the effectiveness of the May visit, as others demanded plan details and a noninterference study.

Sheba Crocker, the U.S. representative of the European Office of the United Nations, said that Bachelet must be able to hold private meetings with a range of Uyghurs and groups in Xinjiang and have access to places where “atrocities” and abuses have been reported.

“Any access limitations imposed on the High Commissioner or her Office, or interference with their activities or reporting, would severely undermine the credibility of her visit and support the propaganda that denies the abuses occurring in Xinjiang,” she said.

A member of the Uyghur community holds a placard in London on April 22, 2021. Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images

Although the visit is crucial, it can only be useful if the Office receives “unfettered access,” World Uyghur Congress President Dolkun Isa said on March 8 in a Twitter post.

Joanne Mariner, a crisis response director at human rights group Amnesty International, also called for an independent visit, given that diplomats and journalists’ visits to Xinjiang have been “carefully stage-managed” by the Chinese authorities in the past.

“Chinese government officials have also long made concerted efforts to disseminate inaccurate and deliberately misleading information about the human rights situation in Xinjiang.”

Mariner called on the U.N. office to release further details of its agreement with Beijing, such as the parameters and scope of the visit.

“It must also seek meaningful assurances from the government that people in Xinjiang will not face adverse consequences for cooperating with the U.N. mission,” she said.

Overdue Report

Bachelet has spoken about wanting to visit Xinjiang since she took office in 2018. The OHCHR has been gathering evidence of alleged human rights abuses in the region for more than three years and compiling a long-awaited report.

The rights chief confirmed last September that the OHCHR was “finalizing its assessment of the available information.” A spokesperson said in December that the report would be released in a matter of weeks.

“The world is still awaiting that report,” a total of 195 human rights groups said in an open letter dated March 8, asking Bachelet to publicize the findings “without further delay.”

“Victims and survivors should not have to wait any longer,” the letter reads, as advocators call on the chief to fulfill her mandate and give the brief to the Human Rights Council as a matter of urgency.

Bachelet’s March 8 video message to the Geneva forum made no reference to the overdue report.

Last week, during his remarks to the assembled U.N. Human Rights Council, Secretary of State Antony Blinken also urged the high commissioner to release her report on Xinjiang.