Advertisement
EU laments UN human rights chief’s limited access on visit to China
- The EU’s foreign affairs spokeswoman expresses ‘regret’ that Michelle Bachelet was not given full access to Xinjiang detention camps
- Beijing has hailed the visit as a great success, but Brussels remains sceptical of the wisdom of the visit
Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
40
Finbarr Berminghamin Brussels
The European Union has expressed “regret” that United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet could not secure full access to persecuted groups, individuals and detention centres during a visit to Xinjiang last week.
Advertisement
Pointing to voluminous “credible reports about systematic human rights violations in Xinjiang”, the bloc’s foreign affairs spokeswoman Nabila Massrali said “independent monitoring, fact-finding and investigations” are the only “credible” ways to properly assess the situation in the Western Chinese province.
“While taking note of the non-investigative nature of the visit, we regret that the high commissioner’s access to independent civil society organisations, human rights defenders and detention centres was limited, and that this did not allow her to assess the full scale of political re-education camps in Xinjiang,” Massrali said.
“In this spirit, the EU encourages the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to release the already announced, remote-monitoring report on the human rights situation in Xinjiang as a matter of priority.”
Beijing hailed Bachelet’s six-day visit as a great success. It was the first visit to China by the UN’s human rights chief since 2005 and had been years in the making.
“Western countries, out of ulterior motives, went to great lengths to disrupt and undercut the high commissioner’s visit, their plot didn’t succeed,” vice-foreign minister Ma Zhaoxu said on Saturday.
Advertisement
Advertisement