The clock is ticking for Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, who has said her office would try to complete a long-overdue report on rights abuses in western China’s Xinjiang region before she leaves her post today (Aug. 31).
China vehemently opposes the publication of the report, while rights organizations and rights groups have pushed for its release. The report would cover a period in which Chinese authorities arbitrarily detained up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in internment camps in Xinjiang, according to numerous investigative reports by rights groups, researchers, foreign media and think tanks.
The predominantly Muslim groups also have been subjected to torture, forced sterilizations and forced labor, as well as the eradication of their linguistic, cultural and religious traditions, in what the United States and several Western parliaments have called genocide and crimes against humanity.