UN rights chief seeks Xinjiang visit this year, says HK trials key test

The top United Nations human rights official said on Monday she hoped to agree terms for a visit this year to China, including its Xinjiang region, to look into reports of serious violations against Muslim Uyghurs.

 

It was the first time that Michelle Bachelet had publicly suggested a timeline for the visit, for which her office has been negotiating the terms since September 2018.

 

China’s UN mission in Geneva, contacted by Reuters for comment, said Xinjiang and Hong Kong were “inalienable parts of China's territory” and that it brooked “no interference by external forces”, but made no comment on her visit.

 

Bachelet is under growing pressure from Western states to secure unfettered access to Xinjiang, where activists say more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims have been held in camps, some of them mistreated or subject to forced labour.