US Concerned About China's Approach To Bachelet's Visit - Blinken

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 29th May, 2022) US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Beijing has failed to enable a full assessment of the human rights situation in China by a UN delegation.

"The United States remains concerned about the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and her team's visit to the People's Republic of China (PRC) and PRC efforts to restrict and manipulate her visit," Blinken said in a Saturday statement.

According to the US Secretary of State, Beijing did not allow a "complete and independent assessment of the human rights environment" in China, including in Xinjiang, during Bachelet's visit on May 23.

Blinken claimed that Xinjiang residents were not allowed to speak openly about the situation in the region.

"The High Commissioner should have been allowed confidential meetings with family members of Uyghur and other ethnic minority diaspora communities in Xinjiang who are not in detention facilities but are forbidden from traveling out of the region. We also note that the High Commissioner was not allowed access to individuals who were part of the Xinjiang labor transfer program and have been sent to other provinces across China," Blinken said.

He reiterated that the United States remains concerned about the human rights situation China and calls on Beijing to allow independent investigators full access to Xinjiang, Tibet, and across China.

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the largest province in China with a population of 25 million people from various ethnic groups, but about 43 percent of them are Uyghurs, most of whom are Muslim. The region, bordering seven countries, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, has been considered an epicenter of terrorism and extremism for many years.

At the end of August 2018, experts from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reported that up to 1 million ethnic Uyghurs could be in so-called "re-education camps" in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Beijing has denied the existence of "re-education camps" on numerous occasions, insisting that the country is fully complying with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.