(TibetanReview.net, Jun16’22) – UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet has said Jun 15 that she was unable to visit detained Uyghurs and that she was accompanied by authorities while visiting East Turkestan (Xinjiang), things she had not said before after her May 23-28 trip. The remarks, which she made at a meeting of the Human Rights Council, raises questions about the Chinese government’s efforts to influence her trip, noted thestandard.com.hk Jun 16.
“I was not able to speak to any Uyghurs currently detained or their families during the visit,” Bachelet was quoted as having told the UN human rights meeting in Geneva. She has added that her China faced “limitations, especially given the prevailing Covid restrictions.”
Repeating that her trip was not an “investigation”, Bachelet has said the government helped her meet “all institutions I had asked to meet, such as senior members of key ministries, the judiciary, business, academia, and other relevant stakeholders.”
It was not clear, however, how such meetings help improve China’s human rights record.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has signaled that his government would not back down on the human rights issue, which has brought upon it worsening of relations and economic and diplomatic sanctions from Western democratic nations.
He wrote in a Communist Party magazine this month that certain nations “have been forcibly promoting Western democratic human rights concepts and systems in the world and using human rights issues to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, resulting in frequent wars, long-term social unrest and displacement of people in some countries,” noted the report, which was sourced from the Bloomberg.