10:14 a.m., May 29, 2022
It has been seventeen years since a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visited Beijing. And what a result! ” It was a visit and not an investigation,” justified Michelle Bachelet, during the press conference concluding her four-day visit to China, thus dampening the hopes of those who hoped for a condemnation by the UN of the atrocities committed in Xinjiang against the Uyghurs by the communist regime.
The High Commissioner merely urged China to “avoid arbitrary measures” in the Xinjiang region, swearing that Beijing had no “supervised” his meetings and that he had even been assured that he had dismantled the network of “vocational training centers”internment camps through which, according to NGOs, more than 1 million Muslims from the Uyghur minority have transited.
An incomprehensible silence
Faced with what NGOs, the United States and even the French Parliament, last January, qualify as crimes against humanity and genocide, Michelle Bachelet showed Saturday an incomprehensible silence. For sole defence, the former Chilean president assured to have ” understood “ those who criticized him for his lack of criticism of the Chinese government and for having spoken with « franchise » to communist leaders. “The visit was an opportunity to discuss human rights directly with the most senior Chinese leaders, she explained during her videoconference. We were able to listen to each other, raise concerns, explore and pave the way for more regular and meaningful interactions in the future. »
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Statements echoing those that Xi Jinping made this week after his meeting by videoconference with Michelle Bachelet: “Human rights issues should not be politicized, instrumentalized or exercised with double standards”declared the strong man of Beijing. “I am disgusted, Michelle Bachelet is only taking the official line of China. She hastened to say that the UN has published a report on racism in the United States, but she said nothing about the investigation of her own services on the Uyghurs which has been awaited for many months.comments Rayhan Asat, a Uyghur lawyer whose brother is imprisoned in Xinjiang.
No comment either on the publication this week of 5,000 photos of detainees, including children, women and the elderly from Xinjiang police computers, handed over to the BBC and other international media by a mysterious whistleblower. . They show heavily armed guards guarding cells in these famous “vocational training centers” and documents confirming that the crackdown has been orchestrated since 2014 at the highest level. “This visit was only a propaganda exercise serving the communist regime, laments a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress in exile.This will only have served to wash away the crimes committed by China”.
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