After five years of waiting, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, has been approved to visit Xinjiang in China. The UN wants to visit the region due to reports that up to one million Uighurs are being held in detention camps there.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, and the Chinese government have agreed to visit the Xinjiang region of western China. According to human rights groups, genocide and other crimes have been committed there against the Muslim minority group Uighurs. Among other things, there is information that about one million people, mainly Uighur Muslims, must have been held in a mass prison camp in the region.
Bachelet told the UN Human Rights Council via video message that she was pleased to announce the visit to take place in May, and that concrete preparations have begun. The UN has been negotiating with China on a visit to Xinjiang since September 2018.
Abuse of Uighurs
It was in nNovember 2019 as the New York Times published reports of brutal abuses against Uighurs in Xinjiang Province. The information was based on leaked documents which showed that China's supreme leader, Xi Jinping, personally initiated a campaign against Uighurs and other population groups who are mainly Muslims.
The official the purpose of the campaign was to counter violent Islamism, after China had suffered several acts of violence. But unofficially, the communist regime has issued instructions to attack Uighur culture, religion and traditions.
Since the campaign began, more and more testimonies have emerged that systematic abuses take place against Uighurs in the region. About one million Uighurs are in so-called internment camps where they are to be "cured" and gain knowledge so that they become good citizens, according to the Communist Party. Testimony shows that there is torture, brainwashing and a rigorous system used to monitor detainees, according to Human Rights Watch. Mosques have been demolished and the practice of Islam has been banned.
China has also been accused to target Muslim, religious people and to demolish Muslim graves.
Beijing denies the allegations, calling them lies and fabrications. The regime claims that China's policy in Xinjiang is about fighting extremism and that the facilities are vocational training centers.
Immigration to Xinjiang
In recent decades, there has been a mass migration of Han Chinese, China's ethnic majority, to Xinjiang. It is alleged that China has orchestrated mass immigration to dilute China's ethnic minority.
The Chinese government is using extreme measures to reduce birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities, as part of a comprehensive campaign to reduce the country's Muslim population. They also encourage Han Chinese to have more children.
The longing for security
Many Uighurs have fled China, and now some of them are affected by the war in Ukraine. Ersin Erkinuly was among the thousands of Uighurs and Kazakhs who fled China due to the regime's policies in the Xinjiang region.
- I fled from China to Kazakhstan at the end of 2019 after I had seen some people around me disappear into detention camps, says Ersin Erkinuly VOA News.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Ersin Erkinuly left Kyiv and traveled for several days. He crossed the Polish border in early March, but when he was about to travel on from Poland to Finland, he was arrested by Estonian border police.
- I have so much pain now. This world is so big, but there is no place where we can live in peace. I just want to live a normal life, he says to VOA from a cell in Estonia.
The Olympic Committee is accused of double standards
In recent years, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been criticized for refusing to take a stand on human rights violations in China. The committee has agreed but that “sport must be isolated from politics”. The IOC is therefore accused of hypocrisy - as the organization has responded to Russia's invasion of Ukraine by urging Russian athletes to be excluded from international sporting events, while they have previously been silent about the treatment of Uighurs in China.
Uighur
The Uighurs are an ethnic group and about twelve million Uighurs live in the Xinjiang region. They are mainly Muslims and have their own language similar to Turkish. In addition, they see themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations. The Uighur people make up less than half of Xinjiang's population.
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