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UN rights chief's visit to Xinjiang does have a silver lining
Bachelet's trip panned as lost cause, but treatment of Uighurs now back in spotlight
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On Twitter, the hashtag #BacheletResign has been trending since the United Nations human rights chief spoke to the press in a late-night conference last Saturday to wrap up her six-day official visit to China.
Many had painted Ms Michelle Bachelet’s trip as a lost cause even before she got off the plane in Guangzhou last week for a fact-finding mission in Xinjiang, which has come under the spotlight in recent years for allegations of human rights abuses against its Uighur Muslim population.
The United States called her visit a “mistake”, while rights groups warned that she would do more harm than good.
Reading from a prepared statement, she told journalists who had dialled in to the virtual press conference that she had raised concerns to the Chinese authorities about “the lack of independent judicial oversight” and transparency in judicial proceedings of Xinjiang’s “counter-terrorism” programme.
She said she urged the authorities to review their measures to ensure they do not fall foul of international human rights standards. She praised China’s poverty-alleviation efforts and announced that there will be an annual strategic meeting between her office and Beijing to discuss human rights issues.
The fallout on Twitter was immediate.
“I think we can clearly say that amid already very low expectations, this is significantly worse than what had been feared. The perhaps worst human rights violation of our time is treated as a matter of internal review by the perpetrator,” tweeted German researcher Adrian Zenz, who had handed over a trove of hacked police documents and photos – now known as the Xinjiang Police Files – to a global consortium of journalists, and whom China has placed on its black list.
Reports by about a dozen participating news organisations on the files were timed for release to coincide with the start of Ms Bachelet’s trip. The files show how Xinjiang’s detention camps – which Beijing calls vocational training centres – are run.
The intense criticism that has been lobbed at Ms Bachelet covered issues such as her decision to co-opt China’s lingo and framing of the Xinjiang situation as a “counter-terrorism and deradicalisation” programme, and the detention camps as “vocational educational and training centres”.
The US and other Western governments had repeatedly voiced deep concerns that her mission would be a highly choreographed affair and she would not get the unfettered access that was demanded by a dozen or so nations as the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights negotiated with Beijing about the visit.
But a visit with unfettered access was never going to happen.
Professor Philip Alston, a former UN Human Rights Council special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights who went on a mission to China in 2016, said the Chinese government would make sure no unapproved meetings would take place.
“In my case, there was open but unacknowledged surveillance of every contact that I had. There was a phone mechanic in the room of one of my colleagues. When she first arrived at our hotel, the mechanic reported that there had been a problem with the phone, and he was very helpfully there to repair it,” he said in an online talk last Friday.
“I’m sure that all of the phones in the location of the High Commissioner and her party will have also been ‘repaired’.”
As expected by many parties, the Chinese have tried to turn Ms Bachelet’s visit and her statement into a vindication and a win for the home team by saying she came and saw and there was nothing to hide.
“It needs to be pointed out that certain Western countries, out of ulterior motives, went to great lengths to disrupt and undercut the High Commissioner’s visit. Their plot didn’t succeed,” Vice-Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu was quoted as saying after Ms Bachelet’s press conference.
Over the past few days, Beijing has also tried to deflect scrutiny of the visit by asking the UN human rights chief to investigate what it said were the US’ human rights violations, such as the recent school shooting in Texas and racial discrimination.
But for all the attacks on Ms Bachelet’s credibility and legitimacy, and the conclusion that this was a lost opportunity, there were silver linings that may have been missed.
Prof Alston argues that the controversy over China’s treatment of its Uighur population may have surfaced a few years ago, but is “getting back on the front pages now” because of the UN rights chief’s mission.
“It’s not going to finish with her press release, her press conference. It’s going to be an ongoing debate,” he said.
Many had painted Ms Michelle Bachelet’s trip as a lost cause even before she got off the plane in Guangzhou last week for a fact-finding mission in Xinjiang, which has come under the spotlight in recent years for allegations of human rights abuses against its Uighur Muslim population.
The United States called her visit a “mistake”, while rights groups warned that she would do more harm than good.
Reading from a prepared statement, she told journalists who had dialled in to the virtual press conference that she had raised concerns to the Chinese authorities about “the lack of independent judicial oversight” and transparency in judicial proceedings of Xinjiang’s “counter-terrorism” programme.
She said she urged the authorities to review their measures to ensure they do not fall foul of international human rights standards. She praised China’s poverty-alleviation efforts and announced that there will be an annual strategic meeting between her office and Beijing to discuss human rights issues.
The fallout on Twitter was immediate.
“I think we can clearly say that amid already very low expectations, this is significantly worse than what had been feared. The perhaps worst human rights violation of our time is treated as a matter of internal review by the perpetrator,” tweeted German researcher Adrian Zenz, who had handed over a trove of hacked police documents and photos – now known as the Xinjiang Police Files – to a global consortium of journalists, and whom China has placed on its black list.
Reports by about a dozen participating news organisations on the files were timed for release to coincide with the start of Ms Bachelet’s trip. The files show how Xinjiang’s detention camps – which Beijing calls vocational training centres – are run.
The intense criticism that has been lobbed at Ms Bachelet covered issues such as her decision to co-opt China’s lingo and framing of the Xinjiang situation as a “counter-terrorism and deradicalisation” programme, and the detention camps as “vocational educational and training centres”.
The US and other Western governments had repeatedly voiced deep concerns that her mission would be a highly choreographed affair and she would not get the unfettered access that was demanded by a dozen or so nations as the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights negotiated with Beijing about the visit.
But a visit with unfettered access was never going to happen.
Professor Philip Alston, a former UN Human Rights Council special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights who went on a mission to China in 2016, said the Chinese government would make sure no unapproved meetings would take place.
“In my case, there was open but unacknowledged surveillance of every contact that I had. There was a phone mechanic in the room of one of my colleagues. When she first arrived at our hotel, the mechanic reported that there had been a problem with the phone, and he was very helpfully there to repair it,” he said in an online talk last Friday.
“I’m sure that all of the phones in the location of the High Commissioner and her party will have also been ‘repaired’.”
As expected by many parties, the Chinese have tried to turn Ms Bachelet’s visit and her statement into a vindication and a win for the home team by saying she came and saw and there was nothing to hide.
“It needs to be pointed out that certain Western countries, out of ulterior motives, went to great lengths to disrupt and undercut the High Commissioner’s visit. Their plot didn’t succeed,” Vice-Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu was quoted as saying after Ms Bachelet’s press conference.
Over the past few days, Beijing has also tried to deflect scrutiny of the visit by asking the UN human rights chief to investigate what it said were the US’ human rights violations, such as the recent school shooting in Texas and racial discrimination.
But for all the attacks on Ms Bachelet’s credibility and legitimacy, and the conclusion that this was a lost opportunity, there were silver linings that may have been missed.
Prof Alston argues that the controversy over China’s treatment of its Uighur population may have surfaced a few years ago, but is “getting back on the front pages now” because of the UN rights chief’s mission.
“It’s not going to finish with her press release, her press conference. It’s going to be an ongoing debate,” he said.
