Michelle Bachelet, the UN’s chief human rights activist, said she had been “unable to assess the full scale” of the famous system of so-called education and training centers in Xinjiang, undermining her historic research on China’s crimes against Uighur Muslims.
The former Chilean president spent two days in the northwestern region of China, where 1 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities have been subjected to mass internment, forced labor and re-education camps, as well as technological surveillance and persecution. police.
In Ürümqi, the capital, and Kashgar, another important city, Bachelet met with senior Communist Party and security officials and visited a prison and a former “vocational education and training center,” among other facilities. . Beijing has insisted for years that the VETC system was needed as part of its response to terrorism and poverty in the region.
“The government has assured me that the VETC system has been dismantled,” he told reporters in Guangzhou.
He added: “Although I am not able to assess the full scale of VETCs, I have raised with the government the lack of independent judicial oversight of the operation of the program… Allegations of use of force and ill-treatment of institutions and reports of excessively severe restrictions on legitimate religious practices. “
Bachelet also called on the Chinese authorities to provide information to Uyghurs who have lost contact with relatives and to review the state’s “counter-terrorism and eradication policies.”
The 70-year-old woman has long been considered a candidate for the first woman head of the UN. His trip to China is the first time a UN human rights commissioner has had access to China since 2005. In the context of allegations of genocide by the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and others, as well as sanctions and boycotts of bonded corporations. in the region.
Experts said Bachelet’s reputation and the UN’s ability to investigate human rights abuses and hold China accountable now depend on its long-running Xinjiang report.
Bachelet is no stranger to prisons. When she was a young woman in Chile in the 1970s, she was captured by secret service agents and held in a clandestine detention center before her exile. His father was tortured and died behind bars.
Despite his personal experiences of repression and an excellent reputation among UN colleagues, human rights experts and diplomats have been pessimistic that Bachelet will learn anything of value about China’s security apparatus. and the plight of the Uighurs. Nor is it expected to convince Beijing to change course.
An anti-riot drill at a Xinjiang Detention Center is captured in this image published by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation © The Victims of Communism Memorial / AFP / Getty Images
Instead, critics said, its tightly controlled mission has been undermined by China’s relentless obstruction, rebuttals of evil and propaganda. The trip also highlighted years of international failures to hold President Xi Jinping’s administration accountable amid China’s growing influence at the UN.
“All our countries with similar ideas have similar views on the visit: it is a victory for China,” a senior European diplomat said in Beijing. “The best thing you can do right now is to be open about the access you have had.”
Bachelet also downplayed the nature of his trip, saying it was an opportunity to hold “direct talks” with China’s top human rights leaders.
“This visit was not an investigation: the official visits of a high commissioner are by their nature high profile and simply do not favor the detailed, methodical and discreet type of work of an investigative nature,” he said.
In a series of previous orchestrated events, Bachelet met with Foreign Minister Wang Yi before speaking with Xi via a video link.
Foreign Minister Wang said Bachelet’s trip “would help clarify the misinformation” of the “anti-Chinese forces” while presenting him with a copy of Xi Jinping’s book: Fragments of Xi Jinping on Respect and Protection. of human rights. Photos of the exchange were distributed by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and state media.
Chinese authorities have controlled access to the region for years, sealing it to journalists, diplomats and non-governmental organizations.
Richard Gowan, director of the UN at the International Crisis Group, said China had turned the trip into a “public relations mess for the UN” and put Bachelet’s chances of improving the situation of Uighurs. “maybe 3 percent.”
But Gowan said the envoy’s trip should be seen from the same perspective as the meeting of UN Secretary-General António Guterres with Russian leader Vladimir Putin last month.
“If the UN is not seen leaving, it is even more detrimental to the residual hope that the UN can do some valuable work,” he said.
“In a sense, it’s being sacrificed because we knew from the first moment that there would be no real Chinese transparency. It’s a trap. But it’s a trap that Bachelet had to get into.”
Complicating its role is a direction, marked by Guterres, to keep China on the side of the UN to fight climate change.
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“The real indicator will be the kind of report that comes up,” said Anjali Dayal, a UN expert at Fordham University in New York.
Dayal added that while it was characteristic that UN investigators “did not have the full picture”, Bachelet’s election of sources and Beijing’s “counter-efforts” would reveal the scope of his office’s independence. , or their absence.
“It’s inevitable in your role to look like you’re taking the government seriously too, even if you don’t plan on buying its history…. The real measure of success will be whether or not it can issue a report documenting more. beyond what the government has shown him, “he said.
Additional report by Arjun Neil Alim in Beijing