Scholars are accusing the United Nations human rights chief of whitewashing China’s repression of the Uyghur people.
Dozens of scholars published an open letter this week, accusing Michelle Bachelet of having ignored or contradicted academic findings on abuses in Xinjiang with the statements she made on the region.
Thirty-nine academics from across the U.S., Europe, and Australia called on Bachelet to release a long-awaited UN report on the human rights abuses in China.
The letter included some academics that Bachelet had consulted prior to visiting Xinjiang. While the academics expressed gratitude to Bachelet for meeting with them before the trip, they said they were “deeply disturbed” by her official statement on the trip.
At the end of Bachelet’s six-day tour, she delivered an official statement at a press conference in Guangzhou.
The academics said the statement both ignored, and even contradicted, the academic findings that colleagues provided.
“It is rare that an academic field arrives at the level of consensus that specialists in the study of Xinjiang have reached,” the letter said.
The academics said that while they disagreed on some questions about why Beijing is committing atrocities in Xinjiang, they are completely unanimous in the understanding of what China is doing.
In Xinjiang, Chinese authorities have conducted years-long crackdowns against the Uyghur and other Muslim minorities. It includes sweeping hardline policies on religion, culture, and language, and also includes physical oppression.
One million people are estimated to have been incarcerated in a vast network of detention and reeducation camps.
China calls these camps “vocational education and training centers.”
Human rights organizations and experts, as well as several governments around the world, have labeled China’s actions against the Uyghur a genocide or a crime against humanity.
At the end of her visit, Bachelet said that she urged the Chinese government to review its counter-terrorism policies in Xinjiang. She also appealed for information about missing Uyghurs.
Human rights groups quickly criticized her remarks, saying she gave very few details or condemnation of China, and only giving instead long unrelated statements about U.S. issues in response to questions by Chinese state media.
Be the first to comment