UN seeks to publish findings on Xinjiang in coming weeks

GENEVA • The United Nations' human rights office is finalising its assessment of the situation in China's Xinjiang region, where Uighurs are alleged to have been unlawfully detained, mistreated and forced to work, a spokesman said.

Mr Rupert Colville said on Friday that the office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet hoped to publish its report in the coming weeks and that there had been "no concrete progress" in long-running talks with Chinese officials on a proposed visit.

Earlier, an unofficial British-based tribunal of lawyers and campaigners said Chinese President Xi Jinping bore primary responsibility for what it said was genocide, crimes against humanity and torture of Uighurs and members of other minorities in the Xinjiang region.

"The People's Republic of China has committed genocide, crimes against humanity and torture against Uighur, Kazakh and other ethnic minority citizens in the north-west region of China known as Xinjiang," the Uighur Tribunal said on Thursday.

China dismissed the tribunal, which has no powers of sanction or enforcement, as a "farce". Its embassy in London said the tribunal was "nothing but a political tool used by a few anti-China and separatist elements to deceive and mislead the public".

Mr Colville told a UN briefing in Geneva: "The Uighur Tribunal has brought to light more information that is deeply disturbing in relation to the treatment of Uighurs and other Muslim-ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

"We have of course similarly identified patterns of arbitrary detention and ill-treatment in institutions, coercive labour practices and erosion of social and cultural rights in general."

China's mission to the UN in Geneva, in a statement issued yesterday, said it had frequently extended an invitation to Ms Bachelet for a "friendly visit".

"However, this visit shall in no way become the so-called 'investigation' under the presumption of guilt," it said. If her office were interested only in "political manipulation of anti-China forces in the US and the West", then this would cast serious doubt on its impartiality, it added.

In June, Ms Bachelet publicly suggested a timeline for a visit this year. She has been negotiating the terms of such a visit since September 2018, when allegations first emerged that about one million Uighurs had been detained in mass camps.

Her findings need to be shared with the Beijing government before they can be made public, Mr Colville said, adding that he hoped that would be in a matter of weeks.

REUTERS