UN: on departure, Michelle Bachelet still does not know if her report on the Uyghurs will be released
The outgoing United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, gives a final press conference at the UN offices in Geneva, August 25, 2022. AFP - FABRICE COFFRINI
Text by: RFI Follow
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A week before the departure of Michelle Bachelet from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), her report on discrimination against Uyghurs in the Chinese region of Xinjiang has still not been published.
During his end-of-term press conference, this Thursday, August 25, uncertainty and unease were papal.
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More than five months after the highly monitored visit of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to China last March, no date has been announced for the publication of her report.
The numerous publications and testimonies evoking the internment and forced labor of more than a million Muslims in this Chinese province have crystallized the issues around this report, eagerly awaited by NGOs.
Asked for the umpteenth time this Thursday, during her end-of-term press conference, about the date of the publication of her report on the state of human rights in Xinjiang, Michelle Bachelet was evasive to say the least.
Well, we're working on the report.
I intended to publish it before the end of my term and we are trying to do so.
We have received substantial contributions from the Chinese authorities, which we must examine carefully, as we always do for any country.
And we are doing our best to achieve what I promised.
🔹@MBachelet recalls how deeply the world has changed in 4 years:
🔺Profound impact of COVID-19
🔺Climate change
🔺Reverberating shocks of food-fuel-finance crisis following #UkraineWar
🔺 Polarization within & among States
🔺 Protests to #FightRacism
👉 https ://t.co/G8iIuaz7s2 pic.twitter.com/l9qOse5lOU
— UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) August 25, 2022
While NGOs, but also Western countries, led by the United States, await these conclusions, China and its allies continue to reject accusations of forced labor and arbitrary internment of Muslim minorities.
Michelle Bachelet:
You cannot imagine the number of letters or meetings where I am asked to publish the report.
A very large number.
Every time I have a meeting, I know the subject will come up.
And I also have letters, from a number of countries asking not to publish the report!
But I've said it before, it's not by pressure that we define things.
In July, the Reuters agency assured that Beijing circulated a letter to various countries in order to push the High Commissioner for Human Rights to abandon the publication of the report.
►Read again: In China, new revelations about the repression of the Uyghurs during the UN visit
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Michelle Bachelet
UN
China
Uyghurs
Human rights