The United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights denounces pressure from the Chinese side not to publish a report on Uyghurs

Practically on the eve of the end of her mandate as Commissioner for Human Rights, which expires on August 31, Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile, revealed that she was pressured not to publish a ready-made report, which would denounce Beijing’s abuses against the Muslim Uyghur minority, which has a population of about twelve million people present in the northern region of Xinjiang. China has reportedly sent a letter, also signed by forty other countries whose names have not been revealed, in which the intent was to dissuade the Commissioner for Human Rights from not publishing the report. The drafting of the report in question has been underway for three years, but also includes the results of the Commissioner’s visit last May, which provoked heavy criticism from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and also from the US State Department. for the attitude considered too accommodating on the part of the UN envoy towards the Chinese authorities, which have been criticized with tones considered too moderate. Despite the rather long processing period for the preparation of the report, publication has been postponed several times for unknown official reasons, although it is assumed that Beijing and its allies have materially operated in this sense. A justification provided by the Commissioner herself is that the delay is due to the need to integrate the results of the disputed May visit into the report, in any case the objective of publication would be by the end of the Commissioner’s mandate, i.e. by the end of the month of August, even if there is no official confirmation to this effect. Many Western countries have specifically requested the publication of the report but the Chinese government has expressed requests to examine the research results more closely; to complicate the situation, a search by fourteen international newspapers intervened, which managed to examine official Chinese documents that would have confirmed the persecution of Uyghurs, through continuous and systematic violations of human rights suffered by at least more than two million people with the practice of internment, also suffered by minors, in re-education centers, where in addition to the administration of physical and psychological violence, the Uighurs are used as a workforce without pay, in a condition comparable to slavery. Beijing denies these allegations by defining the detention centers as vocational training institutes. The accusation against Bachelet by the US Secretary of State is that he did not ask China for news of missing Uyghurs and those deported to other Chinese regions, uprooted from their places of origin, even some human rights organizations have defined the management of the Commissioner as too compliant towards China and asking for her to be replaced by more determined people. The willingness to step down from her role as Commissioner for Human Rights would materialize right after her return from the mission in China and would be justified on personal grounds. The coincidence appears at least suspicious, it could have been the case of too strong Chinese pressure to determine the real reason for the resignation and the awareness of not knowing how to face such a test, that is, not being able to face the consequences of a too little severe relationship on the part of Western countries or the opposite on the part of the Chinese. In any case, an inglorious end to his mandate as Commissioner of Human Rights, which in one way or another will mark the political figure of Bachelet.