Dozens of scholars have accused the UN chief of human rights of ignoring or refuting academic findings about Xinjiang’s abuses in the region.
In an open letter published this week, 39 scholars from across Europe, the United States and Australia called on Michelle Bachelet to publish a long-awaited UN report on human rights abuses in China.
The letter, published online, includes some scholars Bachelet consulted before visiting Xinjiang. The signatories of the letter thanked for it, but said they were “deeply concerned” by her official statement made at a press conference in Guangzhou at the end of her six-day tour.
They said that her statement “ignores and even contradicts the academic findings that our colleagues, including two who signed this letter, provided.”
“It is rare for an academic field to reach the level of consensus reached by Xinjiang scholars,” the letter said. “While we disagree on some of the reasons why Beijing is committing atrocities in Xinjiang, we are unanimous in our understanding of what the Chinese state is doing on the ground.
Xinjiang has been the site of long-standing repression by the Chinese authorities against Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, with a broad firm policy of religious, cultural, linguistic and physical oppression.
Approximately one million people have been detained in a large network of detention and re-education camps, which Beijing calls “vocational education and training centers.” The leak revealed that countless others had been arrested or jailed for alleged crimes, including scripture study, beard growing or traveling abroad, and that authorities had established “shoot to kill” policies in response to attempts to escape.
Human rights groups and several governments have described the campaign as genocide or a crime against humanity. Beijing denies all allegations of ill-treatment and says its policies are to oppose terrorism and religious extremism.
At the end of her visit, Bachelet said she had called on the Chinese government to reconsider its counter-terrorism policies in Xinjiang and called for information on missing Uighurs. She was quickly criticized by some human rights groups for giving little detail or condemning China, while making lengthy unrelated statements on US issues in response to questions from Chinese state media.
The letter from academics is among growing criticism of Bachelet for failing to speak out against Chinese abuses after his visit, as well as for continuing failure to publish the UN report, which is believed to be completed by the end of 2021. On Wednesday, dozens of human rights groups, mostly national and local branches of organizations involved in Uighur and Tibetan campaigns, demanded her resignation.
The 230 organizations accused Bachelet of “whitewashing the Chinese government’s atrocities against human rights” and of “legitimizing Beijing’s attempt to cover up its crimes by using the Chinese government’s false counter-terrorism framework.”
“The failure of the High Commissioner’s visit not only exacerbated the human rights crisis of the people living under the Chinese government, but also seriously compromised the integrity of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in promoting and protecting human rights worldwide.” , the statement said.
They also condemned the fact that she repeatedly referred to the Xinjiang detention camps with the Chinese government’s preferred term: “vocational education and training centers”.
Signatories said Bachelet had been “completely silent on the human rights crisis surrounding Tibet” during her four years in power and had “greatly underestimated the repression” in Hong Kong.
He also called for the urgent publication of the UN report.
“Repeated, open and inexplicable delays seriously call into question the reliability of her office to fulfill its mandate,” the statement said.
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